French cruiser Bruix

Bruix

Sister ship Amiral Charner at anchor, c. 1897
History
France
Name	Bruix
Namesake	Étienne Eustache Bruix
Builder	Arsenal de Rochefort
Laid down	September 1890
Launched	2 August 1894
Commissioned	1 December 1896
Stricken	21 June 1920
Fate	Sold for scrap, 21 June 1921
General characteristics
Class and type	Amiral Charner-class armored 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	16 × Belleville boilers 8,300–9,000 PS (6,105–6,619 kW)
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	2 × single 194 mm (7.6 in) guns 6 × single 138 mm (5.4 in) guns 4 × single 65 mm (2.6 in) guns 4 × single 47 mm (1.9 in) Hotchkiss guns 8 × single 37 mm (1.5 in) 5-barreled revolver guns 4 × 450 mm (17.7 in) torpedo tubes
Armour	Waterline belt: 60–90 mm (2.4–3.5 in) Deck: 40–50 mm (1.6–2.0 in) Gun turrets: 92 mm (3.6 in) Conning tower: 92 mm (3.6 in)

Bruix was one of four Amiral Charner-class armored cruisers built for the French Navy (Marine Navale)in the 1890s. She served in the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean, and in the Far East before World War I. In 1902 she aided survivors of the devastating eruption of Mount Pelée on the island of Martinique and spent several years as guardship at Crete, protecting French interests in the region in the early 1910s.

At the beginning of the war in August 1914, Bruix was assigned to protect troop convoys from French North Africa to France before she was transferred to the Atlantic to support Allied operations against the German colony of Kamerun in September. She was briefly assigned to support Allied operations in the Dardanelles in early 1915 before she began patrolling the Aegean Sea and Greek territorial waters.

The ship 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. Bruix returned home later in 1919 and was reduced to reserve before she was sold for scrap in 1921.