The Edgar Quinet class was the last type of armored cruiser built for the French Navy. The two ships of this class— and —were built between 1905 and 1911. They were based on the previous cruiser, , the primary improvement being a more powerful uniform main battery of guns. The Edgar Quinet class was the most powerful type of armored cruiser built in France, but they entered service more than two years after the British battlecruiser , which, with its all-big-gun armament, had rendered armored cruisers obsolescent.
Both ships operated together in the Mediterranean Fleet after entering service, and they remained in the fleet throughout World War I. They participated in the blockade of the Adriatic to keep the Austro-Hungarian Navy contained early in the war. During this period, Edgar Quinet took part in the Battle of Antivari in August 1914, and Waldeck-Rousseau was unsuccessfully attacked twice by Austro-Hungarian U-boats. Waldeck-Rousseau participated in the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War in the Black Sea in 1919–22, while Edgar Quinet remained in the Mediterranean during the contemporaneous Greco-Turkish War.
Edgar Quinet was converted into a training ship in the mid-1920s before running aground off the Algerian coast in January 1930. She could not be pulled free and sank five days later. Waldeck-Rousseau served as the flagship of the Far East fleet from 1929 to 1932 and was decommissioned after returning to France. She was hulked in 1936 and scrapped in 1941–44.
Development
In the 1890s, naval theorists of the Jeune École (Young School) in France, particularly Admiral Ernest François Fournier, advocated building a fleet of armored cruisers based on the first French ship of that type, . The ships were to be capable of long-range commerce raiding, action in the line of battle against older battleships, and reconnaissance for the main fleet. The French Navy subsequently built a series of twenty-four armored cruisers after Dupuy de Lôme, culminating in the two Edgar-Quinet-class ships that were ordered under the 1904 and 1905 construction programs.
The design for these last two ships was based heavily on their predecessor, , though they incorporated several improvements. The most significant was the adoption of a uniform primary gun battery; Ernest Renan carried a mix of two and twelve guns, but the Edgar Quinet dispensed with the smaller guns in favor of fourteen 194 mm weapons. Their armor layout was also modified and the adopted the same vertical stem that characterized the latest French pre-dreadnought battleships.
Like Ernest Renan, the design for the Edgar Quinet class was repeatedly reworked during construction, which produced very lengthy construction times. The Edgar Quinets were the most powerful armored cruisers built by France, but they entered service two years after the British s, and the British ships' all-big-gun armament and steam turbine propulsion rendered all armored cruisers obsolescent. Compared to the British vessels, the Edgar Quinets retained less effective triple-expansion steam engines, though they were the last major warship to use them.
Description
General characteristics and machinery
The ships of the Edgar Quinet class were long at the waterline and long overall. They had a beam of and a draft of . Edgar Quinet displaced , while Waldeck-Rousseau was slightly heavier, at . The hulls were constructed with mild steel and were fitted with bilge keels to improve stability. The ships had a military foremast with a fighting top and a pole mainmast. The forecastle deck extended for most of the ship, as far as the main mast. They had a crew of 23 officers and 818 enlisted men, and while serving as a divisional flagship, the ships' crew increased by 9 officers and 72 enlisted men of the admiral's staff.
Their power plant consisted of three 4-cylinder triple-expansion steam engines that each drove a screw propeller. Steam was provided by forty coal-fired Belleville type water-tube boilers in Edgar Quinet and forty-two Niclausse boilers in Waldeck-Rousseau. The boilers were trunked into six funnels in two groups of three. The engines were rated at and produced a top speed of . The engines were divided into individual watertight compartments, while the boilers were grouped in pairs in watertight compartments. Maximum coal capacity amounted to , which permitted a cruising range of at a speed of . Electrical power was supplied by six electric generators.