 Amiral Charner at anchor, c. 1897
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| Class overview | |
|---|---|
| Name | Amiral Charner |
| Operators |  French Navy |
| Preceded by | Dupuy de Lôme |
| Succeeded by | Pothuau |
| Built | 1894–96 |
| In commission | 1895–1919 |
| Completed | 4 |
| Lost | 2 |
| Scrapped | 2 |
| General characteristics | |
| Type | Armoured cruiser |
| Displacement | 4,748 t (4,673 long tons) |
| Length | 110.2 m (361 ft 7 in) |
| Beam | 14.04 m (46 ft 1 in) |
| Draught | 6.06 m (19 ft 11 in) |
| Installed power |
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| Propulsion | 2 screws; 2 × triple-expansion steam engines |
| Speed | 17 knots (31 km/h; 20 mph) |
| Range | 4,000 nmi (7,400 km; 4,600 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph) |
| Complement | 16 officers and 378 enlisted men |
| Armament |
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| Armour |
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The Amiral Charner class was a group of four armoured cruisers built for the French Navy (Marine Navale) during the 1890s. They were designed to be smaller and cheaper than the preceding design while also serving as commerce raiders in times of war. Three of the ships were assigned to the International Squadron off the island of Crete during the 1897–1898 uprising there and the Greco-Turkish War of 1897 to protect French interests and citizens. With several exceptions the sister ships spent most of the first decade of the 20th century serving as training ships or in reserve. Bruix aided survivors of the devastating eruption of Mount Pelée on the island of Martinique in 1902. Chanzy was transferred to French Indochina in 1906 and ran aground off the Chinese coast in mid-1907. She proved impossible to refloat and was destroyed in place.
The three survivors escorted troop convoys from French North Africa to France for several months after the beginning of World War I in August 1914. Unlike her sisters, Bruix was transferred to the Atlantic to support Allied operations against the German colony of Kamerun in September 1914 while Amiral Charner and Latouche-Tréville were assigned to the Eastern Mediterranean. where they blockaded the Ottoman-controlled coast, and supported Allied operations. Amiral Charner was sunk in early 1916 by a German submarine. Latouche-Tréville became a training ship in late 1917 and was decommissioned in 1919. Bruix 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. She returned home in 1919 and was sold for scrap in 1921. Latouche-Tréville followed her to the breakers five years later.