French battleship Brennus

In 1880, the French Navy embarked on a naval construction program that included the ironclad battleships and the three-ship ; the program called for two more vessels, which were to be laid down in 1882. The first of these was to have been named and work began in 1885. Admiral Théophile Aube, who opposed battleship construction in favor of the cheaper torpedo boats and cruisers of the , became the Naval Minister and cancelled both ships in January 1886 before much work had been done. Aube left the government in 1887 and his successor permitted work to resume; the ship's designer, Charles Ernest Huin, lobbied to restart construction to keep the shipyards busy. He re-designed to meet new requirements and the design was approved in 1889, allowing work to resume. The sections of hull that had been assembled on the slipway were dismantled, with the steel used elsewhere in the new ship. The fact that the same slipway was used to build both vessels, and parts of the original were reused in the latter vessel has caused some to conflate the vessels. The two ships were, nevertheless, distinct vessels. The second was ordered in 1888. was the first pre-dreadnought-style battleship built in the French Navy; the previous -class ships were barbette ships, a type of ironclad battleship. The ship introduced several advances for the French fleet: new, 42-caliber guns arranged in turrets forward and aft of the superstructure, the first use of homogeneous steel armor, and the first Belleville boilers. Other changes included the adoption of a thin upper strake of armor to protect against quick-firing guns and the abandonment of the ram bow. formed the basis for the subsequent group of five broadly similar battleships built to the same design specifications, begun with , though they reverted to the armament layout of the earlier s which saw the main guns distributed in single turrets in a lozenge (quadrilateral) pattern. General characteristics and machinery was long between perpendiculars and long overall. The ship had a beam of , a draft of . and displaced at deep load, after her reconstruction. proved to be grossly overweight; during her initial sea trials in 1893, her draft was greater than it should have been, and this was not in a fully loaded condition. The increased draft submerged most of the ship's armored belt, rendering it largely useless. Her hull was subdivided by 18 watertight bulkheads and she had a double bottom that extended over the full length of the hull except at the bow. had a crew of 667 officers and enlisted men. The ship suffered from very poor stability, largely a result of her massive superstructure that placed a great deal of weight high in the ship. These problems were not fully solved by extensive reconstruction between 1893 and 1896, which contributed to a short career. Her first stability trial was conducted on 17 June 1893 with all her guns traversed to starboard and her entire crew mustered on the same side; took on a 28° list and the barrels of her 164.7 mm casemate guns were half-submerged. Her metacentric height was calculated at during this incident. The ship's excessive topweight from her massive superstructure, heavy military masts and tall funnels contributed to the problem, together with the pronounced tumblehome of her hull. had a pair of four-cylinder vertical triple-expansion steam engines, each driving a single , four-bladed propeller, using steam supplied by 32 Belleville water-tube boilers at a working pressure of . The boilers exhausted into a pair of large funnels located amidships. The decision to fit with water-tube boilers was made in 1887, and she was the first large ship to be equipped with them. Her engines were rated at , which was intended to allow the ship to steam at a speed of ; during her sea trials on 9 January 1896, reached a maximum speed of from . The ship could carry of coal, which gave her a range of at a speed of . Electricity for lighting, searchlights, pumps, ventilators and other equipment was provided by four 400-ampere dynamos, each driven by a dedicated internal-combustion engine. Armament and armor s main battery consisted of three 42-caliber Canon de Modèle 1887 guns, two in a twin turret forward of the superstructure, and the third in a single turret aft. They fired cast iron (CI) projectiles, or heavier armor-piercing, capped (APC) and semi-armor-piercing, capped (SAPC) shells at a muzzle velocity of . At their maximum elevation of +10°, the guns had a range of . Designed to have a rate of fire of one round per two minutes, the actual rate of fire was about half that in service. The ship initially stowed 39 shells for each gun, but this was later increased to 61. The ship's secondary armament consisted of ten 45-caliber Canon de Modèle 1893 guns, four of which were mounted in single turrets amidships; the other six were located directly underneath them in casemates. They had a muzzle velocity of when firing their CI or AP or SAP shells. The guns had a range of at their maximum elevation of +20°. For defense against torpedo boats, was equipped with a suite of quick-firing guns, the largest of which were four 50-caliber Canon de Modèle 1891 guns in single unshielded mounts on the fore and aft superstructure. Their shells had a muzzle velocity of which gave them a range of . The suite was rounded out by fourteen 40-caliber Modèle 1885 guns and fourteen Modèle 1885 Hotchkiss guns, of which six of the latter were 5-barrel revolver cannon. All of these guns were positioned in the fighting tops on the military masts and in the superstructure. The ship was also fitted with four above-water torpedo tubes on rotating mounts, two on each broadside. She carried two Modèle 1889 torpedoes for each tube. The torpedoes had two speed and range settings: at or at . s armor mostly consisted of nickel steel. The waterline belt was thick amidships and tapered down to at its lower edge. Fore and aft of the armored citadel amidships, the belt reduced to at the waterline; forward its lower edge tapered to a thickness of , but aft the belt tapered to on its bottom edge. The main armored deck was thick. The forward turret and its barbette were protected by armor plates thick, while those of the aft turret and its barbette were thick. The turret roofs were thick. The armor protecting the casemates and secondary gun turrets had a thickness of . The conning tower had thick sides. == Construction and career ==