Back Charlemagne (1895) Czech نبردناو شارلمانی Persian FS Charlemagne (1895) Finnish Charlemagne (cuirassé) French Charlemagne (couraçado) Portuguese Charlemagne (1895) Russian 查理曼號戰艦 Chinese
 Charlemagne at anchor
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| History | |
|---|---|
 France | |
| Name | Charlemagne |
| Namesake | Charlemagne |
| Ordered | 30 September 1893 |
| Builder | Arsenal de Brest |
| Laid down | 2 August 1894 |
| Launched | 17 October 1895 |
| Completed | 12 September 1897 |
| Commissioned | 12 September 1899 |
| Decommissioned | 1 November 1917 |
| Stricken | 21 June 1920 |
| Fate | Sold for scrap, 1923 |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type | Charlemagne-class battleship |
| Displacement | 11,415 t (11,235 long tons) (normal load) |
| Length | 117.7 m (386 ft 2 in) |
| Beam | 20.3 m (66 ft 7 in) |
| Draught | 8.4 m (27 ft 7 in) |
| Installed power |
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| Propulsion | 3 shafts, 3 triple-expansion steam engines |
| Speed | 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph) |
| Range | 4,000 miles (3,480 nmi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph) |
| Complement | 692 |
| Armament |
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| Armour | |
Charlemagne was a predreadnought battleship built for the French Navy in the mid-1890s, the name ship of her class. Completed in 1899, she spent the bulk of her career in the Mediterranean Sea. The battleship was initially assigned to the Northern Squadron (Escadre du Nord), but was not transferred to the Mediterranean Squadron (Escadre de la Méditerranée) until 1900. Twice the ship 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. Charlemagne and her sister ships rejoined the Northern Squadron in 1909 and the obsolete battleship became a gunnery training ship in 1913.
When World War I began in August 1914, she escorted Allied troop convoys in the Mediterranean for the first three months. Charlemagne was ordered to the Dardanelles in November to guard against a sortie into the Mediterranean by the ex-German Ottoman battlecruiser Yavuz Sultan Selim. In 1915, she joined British ships in bombarding Ottoman fortifications. The ship was transferred later that year to the squadron assigned to prevent any interference by the Greeks with Allied operations on the Salonica front. Charlemagne briefly served as a flagship before she was converted into a depot ship in mid-1917 and was partially disarmed later that year. The ship was stricken from the naval register in 1918. Charlemagne was condemned in 1920 and later sold for scrap in 1923.