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''Saint Louis'' was the last of the three ''Charlemagne''-class pre-dreadnought battleships built for the French Navy in the mid-1890s. She spent most of her career assigned to the Mediterranean Squadron (''escadre de la Méditerranée'') and usually was chosen to serve as a flagship. The ship was involved in two accidental ramming incidents with two other French warships in her career, one of which sank a submarine. When World War I began, she escorted Allied troop convoys for the first two months. ''Saint Louis'' was ordered to the Dardanelles in November 1914 to guard against a sortie into the Mediterranean by the German battlecruiser . In 1915, she was transferred to the Eastern Mediterranean where she participated in bombarding Turkish positions in Palestine and the Sinai Peninsula. The ship returned to the Dardanelles in May and provided fire support during the Gallipoli Campaign. ''Saint Louis'' was transferred to the squadron assigned to prevent any interference by the Greeks with Allied operations on the Salonica front in May 1916, after a lengthy refit in France. The ship was placed in reserve in April 1917 and briefly became a training ship in 1919–20. She was converted to serve as an accommodation hulk in 1920 and listed for disposal as scrap in 1931. ''Saint Louis'' did not find a buyer, however, until 1933. ==Design and description== ''Saint Louis'' was long overall and had a beam of . At deep load, she had a draught of forward and aft. She displaced at deep load.〔Gille, p. 98〕 Her crew consisted of 30 officers and 702 sailors as a private ship, or 41 officers and 744 men as a fleet flagship.〔d'Ausson, p. 6〕 The ship used three 4-cylinder vertical triple expansion steam engines, one engine per shaft. Rated at , they produced during the ship's sea trials using steam generated by 20 Belleville water-tube boilers. ''Saint Louis'' reached a top speed of on her trials. She carried a maximum of of coal which allowed her to steam for at a speed of .〔 ''Saint Louis'' carried her main armament of four 40-calibre Canon de 305 mm Modèle 1893 guns in two twin-gun turrets, one each fore and aft. The ship's secondary armament consisted of ten 45-calibre Canon de 138 mm Modèle 1893 guns, eight of which were mounted in individual casemates and the remaining pair in shielded mounts on the forecastle deck amidships. She also carried eight 45-calibre Canon de 100 mm Modèle 1893 guns in shielded mounts on the superstructure. The ship's anti-torpedo boat defences consisted of twenty 40-calibre Canon de 47 mm Modèle 1885 Hotchkiss guns, fitted in platforms on both masts, on the superstructure, and in casemates in the hull. ''Saint Louis'' mounted four torpedo tubes, two on each broadside. Two of these were submerged, angled 20° from the ship's axis, and the other two were above the waterline. They were provided with twelve Modèle 1892 torpedoes. As was common with ships of her generation, she was built with a plough-shaped ram.〔Caresse, pp. 114, 116–17〕 The ''Charlemagne''-class ships carried a total of 〔Caresse, p. 117〕 of Harvey armour.〔Chesneau and Kolesnik, p. 117〕 They had a complete waterline armour belt that was high. The armour belt tapered from its maximum thickness of to a thickness of at its lower edge. The armoured deck was thick on the flat and was reinforced with an additional plate where it angled downwards to meet the armoured belt. The main turrets were protected by of armour and their roofs were thick. Their barbettes were thick. The outer walls of the casemates for the guns were 55 mm thick and they were protected by transverse bulkheads thick. The conning tower walls were thick and its roof consisted of 50 mm armour plates. Its communications tube was protected by armour plates thick.〔 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「French battleship Saint Louis」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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