French battleship Charles Martel

Uncommon card · No. 114472

Charles Martel was a pre-dreadnought battleship of the French Navy built in the 1890s. Completed in 1897, she was a member of a group of five broadly similar battleships ordered as part of the French response to a major British naval construction program. The five ships were built to the same basic design parameters, though the individual architects were allowed to deviate from each other in other details. Like her half-sisters—Carnot, Jauréguiberry, Bouvet, and Masséna—she was armed with a main battery of two 305 mm (12 in) guns and two 274 mm (10.8 in) guns. The ship had a top speed of 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph). Charles Martel spent her active career in the Escadre de la Méditerranée (Mediterranean Squadron) of the French fleet, first in the active squadron, and later in the Escadre de réserve (Reserve Squadron). She regularly participated in fleet maneuvers, and in the 1901 exercises, the submarine Gustave Zédé hit her with a training torpedo. Charles Martel spent just five years in...

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