Ernest Renan

Ernest Renan was an armored cruiser built for the French Navy in the first decade of the 20th century. At the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, she participated in the hunt for the German battlecruiser and then joined the blockade of the Austro-Hungarian Navy in the Adriatic. She took part in the Battle of Antivari later in August, and the seizure of Corfu in January 1916, but saw no further action during the war. After the war, the British and French intervened in the Russian Civil War; this included a major naval deployment to the Black Sea, which included Ernest Renan. She served as a training ship in the late 1920s before she was sunk as a target ship in the 1930s. Design and description Ernest Renan was intended to be a member of the , but naval architect Emile Bertin repeatedly tinkered with the design and decided to lengthen the ship in an attempt to increase her speed. She measured overall, with a beam of . Ernest Renan had a draft of and displaced . Her crew numbered either 750 or 824 officers and enlisted men. The ship had three propeller shafts, each powered by a single vertical triple-expansion steam engine. They were rated at a total of using steam provided by 42 Niclausse boilers. The boilers were grouped into two sets of boiler rooms that were separated by the amidships gun turrets and their magazines. They exhausted into six funnels, which were grouped in two widely spaced sets of three. Ernest Renan had a designed speed of , but reached from during her sea trials. She initially carried up to of coal, although this was later reduced to , which gave her a range of at a speed of .