Charlemagne-class battleship

Common card · No. 410187

The Charlemagne class consisted 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 eventful peacetime careers as they were involved in four accidental collisions among 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 SMS Goeben. Charlemagne and Gaulois joined British ships in bombarding Turkish fortifications in early 1915 while...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Alexandre Bougault, Public domain