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The ''Charlemagne'' class was a class of three pre-dreadnought battleships built for the French Navy in the 1890s. The ships spent most of their careers assigned to the Mediterranean Squadron (''Escadre de la Méditerranée''). They had oddly eventful peacetime careers as they were involved in four accidental collisions between them, one of which sank a French submarine with all hands. ''Saint Louis'' was usually a fleet flagship during her career and ''Charlemagne'' twice participated in the occupation of the port of Mytilene on the island of Lesbos—then owned by the Ottoman Empire—once as part of a French expedition and another as part of an international squadron. During World War I, they were initially used to escort Allied troop convoys in the Mediterranean. All three ships were ordered to the Dardanelles in November 1914 to guard against a sortie into the Mediterranean by the German battlecruiser . ''Charlemagne'' and ''Gaulois'' joined British ships in bombarding Turkish fortifications in early 1915 while ''Saint Louis'' was briefly assigned to bombard Turkish positions in Palestine and the Sinai Peninsula. ''Gaulois'' was badly damaged by a Turkish shell during one of these bombardments and had to beach herself to avoid sinking. She later returned to the Dardanelles and rejoined her sisters, providing fire support during the Gallipoli Campaign until the Allies evacuated their troops. ''Saint Louis'' and ''Charlemagne'' were transferred to the squadron assigned to prevent any interference by the Greeks with Allied operations on the Salonica front in 1916 and ''Gaulois'' was en route to join them when she was sunk by a German submarine later that year. The two surviving ships were placed in reserve during 1917. ''Charlemagne'' was decommissioned later in 1917 and sold for scrap in 1923. ''Saint Louis'' briefly became a training ship in 1919–20 and was then converted to serve as an accommodation hulk in 1920. She was not sold until 1933, although she was listed for disposal in 1931. ==Design and description== The ''Charlemagne''-class battleships were long overall and had a beam of . At deep load, they had a draught of forward and aft. They displaced at deep load.〔 Their crew generally consisted of 727 officers and enlisted men〔 as a private ship, or 41 officers and 744 men as a fleet flagship.〔d'Ausson, p. 6〕 The ''Charlemagne''-class ships did not function well in a head sea. Stormy weather in the Bay of Biscay in 1900 caused the captain of ''Gaulois'' to complain that the ship's forward gun turret and casemates were flooded out and that the ship generated enormous sheets of spray when water came over the bow. Like most French capital ships of the period, they had pronounced tumblehome. ''Gaulois''s captain also said that his ship was a steady gunnery platform and manoeuvered well in tight spaces but he criticized the armour layout as not high enough to prevent munitions from penetrating above the main armour belt and detonating below the secondary armament positions.〔Caresse, p. 120〕 The ships used three 4-cylinder vertical triple expansion steam engines, each engine driving a propeller.〔 Rated at , they produced between during their sea trials using steam generated by 20 Belleville water-tube boilers. The boilers had a maximum operating pressure of .〔 The ships reached top speeds of on their trials.〔〔 They carried a maximum of of coal which allowed them to steam for at a speed of .〔 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「Charlemagne-class battleship」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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