Hello again!
After the French Navy had - like the RN, but on an even more modest scale - preferred smaller armoured cruisers (Dupleix-, Gueydon- and Gloire-classes) in the final years of the 19th century, they returned to a more robust type in 1901. At 12.300 tons, the Leon Gambetta was able to carry a full 150mm belt of which even something was visible above water at full load, and engines for a speed of 22,5 knots, both of which was fully state of the art at the time she was laid down. Main armament was doubled compared with the Gloire-class, now consisting of four 195mm and sixteen 165mm guns. All except four of the secondaries were mounted in turrets, which had up to 200mm of armour. The tertiary battery had 24 47mm guns. Despite this improvement, they were only little better than a Hampshire-class cruiser in terms of firepower. Externally, they resembled their predecessors, and like the contemporary Republique-class battleships, whom they resembled in many detail solutions, they were rated reasonaby good seaboats, much unlike many earlier French warships. Leon Gambetta and her nearly identical sister ship Jules Ferry (both named for left-wing political figures of the Third Republic in a conscious attempt to whip the Navy, which was widely suspected to harbour royalist tendencies, into the Republican camp) were laid down in 1901 and completed in 1905.
![[ img ]](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/ez1den3y1u59nez/CA_Jules_Ferry_1905.png?dl=0)
Both differed only in tiny details (Ventilator arrangement, rigging, shape of the boat cranes). Gambetta had a larger part of her funnel tops painted black than Ferry, probably for identification.
![[ img ]](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/y2c1jmf5n03aild/CA_Leon_Gambetta_1906.png?dl=0)
A third unit was laid down in 1903 and named for the prominent writer Victor Hugo, who also had pursued a distinctly republican political agenda. The ship differed in many details from the first two (Funnel and ventilator shape, boat arrangement, boat crane shape, aft superstructure shape, mainmast arrangement, rigging, ladder boom stowage, placement of the bridge wings one deck lower). For some reason, she was about 800 tons heavier than her sisters, slightly exceeding 13.000 tons. She was one of a limited number of French ships to have her superstructure painted in 'Toile Mouillee' (wet canvas), a mixture of the earlier dull brown superstructure colour (25%) and white (75%); I have not yet found out if there was any system why certain ships had white superstructures and others 'Toille Mouillee'. Probably had something to do with where the remaining barrels of brown colour were stored after procurement was discontinued.
![[ img ]](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/u5kmsd6p5c8up6n/CA_Victor_Hugo_1907.png?dl=0)
After some years of service, all had their masts shortened and were painted gris bleu.
![[ img ]](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/bc4bwsxyi05oxo1/CA_Jules_Ferry_1913.png?dl=0)
Hugo wore two identification bands around the second funnel; at some point before the war, her turrets were painted white for fleet exercises.
![[ img ]](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/uo07vdpy1ntxa2h/CA_Victor_Hugo_1914.png?dl=0)
Gambetta had two bands around the third funnel. Leon Gambetta was lost in this state in 1915, torpedoed by the Austrian submarine U-5.
![[ img ]](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/10dbbb5mj7f0w5e/CA_Leon_Gambetta_1915.png?dl=0)
The other two had their tertiary battery reduced and four of the 47mm guns placed in AA mounts in 1916/7. Their wireless equipment was augmented. Ferry is one of the very few French vessels of which I have not found any pictures with the black turrets typical for the second half of the war; this does however not mean she never was painted that way.
![[ img ]](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/b53w0a86sodjsdn/CA_Jules_Ferry_1916.png?dl=0)
Hugo had her turrets painted black; unlike most other French ships, her CT was painted black as well.
![[ img ]](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/kdn472rpl8sd9ft/CA_Victor_Hugo_1918.png?dl=0)
Both were used as TS after the war and scrapped in the late 1920s.
A fourth unit of identical size to Victor Hugo, but with considerably altered armament was laid down in 1904. She had only 12 165mm guns, all of them in single mounts; her 195mm guns were however of a newer, more powerful L/50. She had the same speed and protection, but differed in so many external details (number and arrangement of secondaries, arrangement of tertiaries, much more austere bridge shape, no fighting top, shape and arrangement of cranes, shape of aft superstructure, slightly larger funnels) that she was not rated a unit of the Gambetta-class, but a type of her own. She was named for the writer and historian Jules Michelet, another anti-clerical republican.
![[ img ]](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/yx0seog7pbixq3p/CA_Jules_Michelet_1909.png?dl=0)
Wartime alterations were similar to the others: more w/t equipment, reduced and re-arranged tertiary armament and the typical black colouring for turrets.
![[ img ]](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/6sip0pv6vryxr7a/CA_Jules_Michelet_1917.png?dl=0)
Greetings
GD