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''Bruix'' was one of four armored cruisers built for the French Navy in the 1890s. She served in the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean, and in the Far East before World War I. In 1902 she aided survivors of the devastating eruption of Mount Pelée on the island of Martinique and spent several years as guardship at Crete, protecting French interests in the region in the early 1910s. At the beginning of the war in August 1914, ''Bruix'' was assigned to protect troop convoys from French North Africa to France before she was transferred to the Atlantic to support Allied operations against the German colony of Kamerun in September. She was briefly assigned to support Allied operations in the Dardanelles in early 1915 before she began patrolling the Aegean Sea and Greek territorial waters. The ship 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. ''Bruix'' returned home later in 1919 and was reduced to reserve before she was sold for scrap in 1921. ==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 ship measured between perpendiculars, with a beam of . ''Bruix'' had a forward draft of and drew aft. She displaced at normal load and at deep load.〔Feron, p. 15〕 The ''Amiral Charner'' class had two 4-cylinder triple-expansion steam engines, each driving a single propeller shaft. Steam for the engines was provided by 16 Belleville boilers and they were rated at a total of using forced draught. ''Bruix'' had a designed speed of , but only reached a maximum speed of from during sea trials on 15 September 1896. The ship carried up to of coal and could steam for at a speed of .〔Feron, pp. 15, 17, 25〕 The ships of the ''Amiral Charner'' class had a main armament that consisted of two Canon de 194 mm Modèle 1887 guns that were mounted in single gun turrets, one each fore and aft of the superstructure. Their secondary armament comprised six Canon de 138.6 mm Modèle 1887 guns, each in single gun turrets on each broadside. For anti-torpedo boat defense, they carried four guns, four and eight five-barreled revolving Hotchkiss guns. They were also armed with four pivoting torpedo tubes; two mounted on each broadside above water.〔Feron, pp. 11, 15〕 The side of the ''Amiral Charner'' class was generally protected by of steel armor, from below the waterline to above it. The bottom tapered in thickness and the armor at the ends of the ships thinned to . The curved protective deck had a thickness of along its centerline that increased to at its outer edges. Protecting the boiler rooms, engine rooms, and magazines below it was a thin splinter deck. A watertight internal cofferdam, filled with cellulose, ran the length of the ship from the protective deck〔Feron, pp. 12, 15〕 to a height of above the waterline.〔Chesneau & Kolesnik, p. 304〕 The ship's conning tower and turrets were protected by 92 millimeters of armor.〔 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 cruiser Bruix」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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