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The ''Amiral Charner'' class was a group of four armoured cruisers built for the French Navy during the 1890s. They were designed to be smaller and cheaper than the preceding design while also serving as commerce raiders in times of war. Three of the ships were assigned to the International Squadron off the island of Crete during the Greco-Turkish War of 1897 to protect French interests and citizens. With several exceptions the sister ships spent most of the first decade of the 20th century serving as training ships or in reserve. ''Bruix'' aided survivors of the devastating eruption of Mount Pelée on the island of Martinique in 1902. ''Chanzy'' was transferred to French Indochina in 1906 and ran aground off the Chinese coast in mid-1907. She proved impossible to refloat and was destroyed in place. The three survivors escorted troop convoys from French North Africa to France for several months after the beginning of World War I in August 1914. Unlike her sisters, ''Bruix'' was transferred to the Atlantic to support Allied operations against the German colony of Kamerun in September 1914 while ''Amiral Charner'' and ''Latouche-Tréville'' were assigned to the Eastern Mediterranean. where they blockaded the Ottoman-controlled coast, and supported Allied operations. ''Amiral Charner'' was sunk in early 1916 by a German submarine. ''Latouche-Tréville'' became a training ship in late 1917 and was decommissioned in 1919. ''Bruix'' was decommissioned in Greece at the beginning of 1918 and recommissioned after the end of the war in November for service in the Black Sea against the Bolsheviks. She returned home in 1919 and was sold for scrap in 1921. ''Latouche-Tréville'' followed her to the breakers five years later. ==Design and description== The ''Amiral Charner''-class ships were designed to be smaller and cheaper than the preceding armored cruiser design, the . Like the older ship, they were intended to fill the commerce-raiding strategy of the Jeune École.〔Feron, pp. 8–9〕 The ships measured between perpendiculars and had a beam of . They had a forward draught of and drew aft. The ''Amiral Charner'' class displaced at normal load and at deep load. They were fitted with a prominent plough-shaped ram at the bow. This made the ships very wet forward, although they were generally felt to be reasonably good sea boats and handled well by their captains. Their metacentric height was deemed to be inadequate and all of the surviving ships had their military masts replaced by lighter pole masts between 1910 and 1914.〔Feron, pp. 10, 15, 17〕 The ''Amiral Charner''-class ships had two horizontal triple-expansion steam engines, each driving a single propeller shaft. Steam for the engines was provided by 16 Belleville boilers at a working pressure of and the engines were rated at a total of using forced draught. The engines in ''Bruix'' were more powerful than those of her sister ships and were rated at . The ships had a designed speed of , but during sea trials they failed to meet their specified speed, only reaching maximum speeds of from . They carried up to of coal and could steam for at a speed of .〔Feron, pp. 15, 17, 19, 25〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Amiral Charner-class cruiser」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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