French cruiser Pothuau

Pothuau at anchor
Class overview
Operators	French Navy
Preceded by	Amiral Charner class
Succeeded by	Jeanne d'Arc
History
Name	Pothuau
Namesake	Louis Pothuau
Ordered	11 April 1893
Builder	Forges et Chantiers de la Méditerranée, Granville
Cost	11,156,422 francs
Laid down	25 May 1893
Launched	19 September 1895
Completed	9 July 1897
Commissioned	8 June 1897
Decommissioned	12 June 1926
Stricken	3 November 1927
Fate	Sold for scrap, 25 September 1929
General characteristics
Type	Armoured cruiser
Displacement	5,460 tonnes (5,374 long tons)
Length	113.1 m (371 ft 1 in)
Beam	15.3 m (50 ft 2 in)
Draught	6.4 m (21 ft 0 in)
Installed power	10,000 ihp (7,500 kW; 10,000 PS) 18 Belleville boilers
Propulsion	2 Shafts; 2 triple-expansion steam engines
Speed	19 knots (35 km/h; 22 mph)
Range	4,500 nmi (8,300 km; 5,200 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph)
Complement	455 (490 as flagship)
Armament	2 × single 194 mm (7.6 in) guns 10 × single 138.6 mm (5.5 in) guns 12 × single 47 mm (1.9 in) guns 8 × single 37 mm (1.5 in) guns 4 × 450 mm (17.7 in) torpedo tubes
Armour	Waterline belt: 52–80 mm (2.0–3.1 in) Deck: 55–105 mm (2.2–4.1 in) Gun turrets: 180 mm (7.1 in) Battery: 54 mm (2.1 in) Conning tower: 240 mm (9.4 in)

The French cruiser Pothuau was an armoured cruiser built for the French Navy (Marine Navale) in the 1890s. She spent most of her active career in the Mediterranean before becoming a gunnery training ship in 1906. The ship participated in the Kamerun campaign early in World War I before she was transferred to the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean in 1916 where she patrolled and escorted convoys. Pothuau fruitlessly searched the Indian Ocean for the German commerce raider Wolf in mid-1917. The ship resumed her previous role after the war until she was decommissioned in 1926 and sold for scrap three years later.