() was a large protected cruiser built for the French Navy in the 1890s. The only vessel of her class, was intended to serve as a flagship of the cruiser squadron that defended French Indochina and other possessions in the Far East. Her construction came during a period of conflict in the French naval command between factions that favored different cruiser types; represented the ideas of the , who favored large cruisers for long-range operations overseas. She was armed with a main battery of two guns, the largest guns ever carried aboard a French cruiser, though their great weight, coupled with her pronounced ram bow degraded her seaworthiness. She nevertheless provided the basis for later armored cruisers.
was initially deployed to Indochina, where she took part in Eight-Nation Alliance operations during the Boxer Uprising, including the Battle of the Taku Forts in June 1900. Problems with her guns forced her to return to France for repairs in 1903, though she returned to Indochina for another tour from 1905 to 1909. She was modernized in 1909–1912 and served as the flagship of the Training Squadron until the start of World War I in July 1914. The ship spent much of the war in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, where she assisted in the defense of the Suez Canal from Ottoman attacks and patrolled the coast of Ottoman Syria. She was transferred for operations elsewhere after 1916, including supporting Arab rebels in the Red Sea and escorting convoys in the Indian Ocean.
After the war, helped to carry French troops back from the (Army of the East) before being placed in reserve in June 1919. She was struck from the naval register in 1922 and transferred to the Belgian Navy in 1923, where she served as a depot ship for three years. After briefly returning to France in 1926, she was sold to the Polish Navy in 1927, which renamed the vessel and then . Employed as a stationary training ship, she remained in Polish service until the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, when she was damaged by German aircraft. She was captured by the Germans and used as a barracks ship before being broken up around 1942.
Background In the mid-1880s, elements in the French naval command argued over future warship construction; the advocated building long-range and fast protected cruisers for use as commerce raiders on foreign stations while a traditionalist faction preferred larger armored cruisers and small fleet scouts, both of which were to operate as part of the main fleet in home waters. This led to the development of two types of cruisers: medium ships of and smaller ships of around . By the end of the decade and into the early 1890s, the traditionalists were ascendant, leading to the construction of several armored cruisers of the , though the supporters of the secured approval for one large cruiser built according to their ideas, which became . They were able to leverage the acquisition of French Indochina in the 1880s, which required a permanent squadron of warships to control and defend the colony. was intended to serve as a flagship for the squadron, and as such, was designed with additional facilities to accommodate an admiral and his staff.
Design
Design work on the ship began in 1891 with a version armed with four guns in the same lozenge arrangement as the contemporary pre-dreadnought battleships like . They were also to carry eight guns. The (Council of Works) decided in a meeting on 7 July that displacement should be limited to if possible; this limitation precluded an armament of four large-caliber guns if the latest water-tube boilers were retained. In an attempt to keep displacement under the limit, the considered scaling down the level of armor protection or reducing the caliber or number of guns. They ultimately decided to remove the amidships 240 mm guns and to supplement the ship's firepower with four more 138 mm guns.
The refined design included a sailing rig to supplement the ship's engines on long voyages overseas, but the French naval ministry issued a directive on 2 March 1892 to abandon the use of sails in cruising warships. s design was accordingly altered. The then issued requests for finalized designs meeting their specifications from four naval architects and three private shipyards, which were evaluated during a meeting on 29 March. Three proposals were chosen for further refinement, and after a second round, two were approved on 31 January 1893. After further evaluation, the ship proposed by the architect Amable Lagane, of the shipyard, on 8 November. By the time the design was finalized, weight constraints had forced Lagane to abandon water-tube boilers for fire-tube boilers, which were smaller but obsolescent.
A sister ship to was approved on 21 August 1895, which was to have been built to the second design the had approved, and was to have been named . But the new naval minister, Édouard Lockroy, cancelled the ship in early 1896 in favor of another armored cruiser without consulting the , which oversaw naval construction. Lockroy was replaced as naval minister in April 1896, and his successor, Armand Besnard, attempted to secure parliamentary approval for another -class cruiser, but the Chamber of Deputies refused, ending the project.
represented an evolutionary step between the smaller armored cruiser and the larger armored cruisers that followed, beginning with . In addition, her design was used as the basis of the medium armored cruisers of the , which were also intended to serve overseas. nevertheless suffered from defects that curtailed her active career, most significantly design defects that hampered her seakeeping. The heavy main gun forward, coupled with the ram bow, caused her to ship considerable amounts of water in heavy seas.
General characteristics and machinery
was long between perpendiculars and long overall, with a beam of and a draft of . She displaced . Her hull had a flush deck and a pronounced ram bow, and was sheathed in teak and a copper layer to protect it from biofouling on long voyages overseas. As was typical for French warships of the period, she had a significant tumblehome shape.
The ship proved to be poorly ventilated and thus very hot in service, necessitating cooling equipment in her ammunition magazines. was fitted with a pair of light pole masts for observation and signalling purposes. Her superstructure was fairly minimal, consisting of a small conning tower and bridge structure forward and a smaller, secondary conning position aft. Because she was intended to serve as a flagship, she was outfitted with accommodations for an admiral and his staff. Her crew numbered 559 officers and enlisted men, and a flag staff added another 28 officers and men.
The ship's propulsion system consisted of a pair of 3-cylinder vertical triple-expansion steam engines driving two screw propellers. The engines were placed side by side amidships, each in an individual engine room. Steam was provided by five coal-burning, double-ended fire-tube boilers; four were placed further forward, ducting into two funnels, and the fifth boiler was further aft, with its own funnel. The forward set of boilers was divided into two boiler rooms. The boilers proved to be troublesome in service, particularly in comparison to the water-tube boilers used in other French cruisers.
Her machinery was rated to produce normally and up to on forced draft, for a top speed of . She reached a maximum speed of during sea trials in 1899. Coal storage amounted to , which allowed to steam for at a speed of .
Armament
The ship was armed with a main battery of two 40-caliber (cal.) M1893 guns, which were placed in single-gun turrets, one forward and one aft on the centerline. These guns were the largest to be installed aboard a French cruiser of any type. The turrets were electrically operated, and allowed elevation of the guns to 20 degrees. Three types of shell were carried, including a cast iron projectile, along with armor-piercing and semi-armor-piercing shells, both of which weighed . The shells had a muzzle velocity of , depending on the type.
These were supported by a secondary battery of twelve Model 1893 45-cal. guns, eight of which were carried in individual casemates in the main deck. The other four were in gun shield-protected pivot mounts on the upper deck. For close-range defense against torpedo boats, she carried twelve 3-pounder Hotchkiss guns and six 1-pounder guns.
She was also armed with four torpedo tubes, two in her hull below the waterline and the other two in trainable, deck-mounted launchers. The deck tubes were placed amidships, one on each broadside, while the submerged tubes were just aft of the forward main battery gun and were in fixed positions. These were supplied with a total of twelve Model 1892 torpedoes. They carried a warhead and had a range of at a speed of . She had a storage capacity for twenty naval mines, which was typical for cruisers intended to serve overseas. She had no minelaying apparatus, as the mines were only intended to be used to help defend a port, and they would have been laid by smaller boats.
Armor Armor protection consisted of nickel steel armor. She had a curved armor deck; on the flat portion in the central part of the ship where it protected the machinery spaces, the deck was thick. It sloped downward at the sides and increased in thickness to . Toward the bow and stern, the deck was decreased slightly to on the flat and on the slopes. All of the deck armor was attached to a pair of underlying layers of thick mild steel. A second deck consisting of another double layer of 10 mm steel was above the flat portion of the main deck with a cofferdam connecting it to the main deck; this upper deck formed the roof of the secondary battery. The cofferdam was subdivided extensively to contain flooding in the event of damage.
s conning tower was heavily armored with of nickel steel on the sides, also backed by two layers of 10 mm mild steel. The tower's roof consisted of two layers of of steel. Her semi-elliptical main battery turrets received the same level of protection on the front, but thinned at the sides and rear to with the same mild steel backing. Their supporting barbettes were above the battery deck and below. Each casemate consisted of plating with the double 10 mm backing.
Service history French career
, named for Admiral Antoine Bruni d'Entrecasteaux, was built at the shipyard in La Seyne-sur-Mer. She was ordered on 8 November 1893 and was laid down in June 1894, was launched on 12 June 1896, and was commissioned on 1 January 1898 to begin sea trials. During testing on 28 April, one of her boilers burst, scalding four stokers badly and delaying her completion by six months. The ship was completed in early 1899 and was placed in full commission on 15 February. She was immediately ordered to the Far East to join the (Naval Division of the Far East and Western Pacific) and serve as its flagship, where she replaced the old ironclad . After departing on 6 April, she reached Saigon in French Indochina on 12 May, where she joined the protected cruisers , , and . Rear Admiral de Courejolles hoisted his flag aboard on 1 June and she thereafter embarked on a long voyage around East Asia, sailing as far north as China.