Marceau-class ironclad

The Marceau class was group of three of ironclad barbette ships of the French Navy built in the 1880s and early 1890s. The class comprised Marceau, the lead ship, Neptune, and Magenta; a fourth member of the class, Hoche was substantially re-designed after defects in the original plans for the class could not be rectified. The ships were based on the earlier Amiral Baudin class of barbette ships, but with smaller guns: four 340 mm (13.4 in) weapons compared to the three 420 mm (16.5 in) guns of the earlier vessels. They introduced the lozenge arrangement for their main battery that became common for many French capital ships built in the 1890s. Continuous tinkering with the Marceau design during their long construction produced badly flawed vessels that were superseded by more powerful pre-dreadnought battleships almost immediately after the French commissioned them in the early 1890s.

The three ships served in the Mediterranean Squadron in the 1890s and saw little activity beyond routine training exercises. They were quickly reduced to the Reserve Division of the squadron as the French commissioned their own pre-dreadnoughts. All three Marceaus were modernized in the early 1900s, receiving new water-tube boilers and having their top-heavy superstructures and masts cut down, but they saw little activity afterward. Marceau and Magenta were used as training ships, while Neptune saw no further use. The latter two vessels were discarded between 1908 and 1913, while Marceau lingered on as a floating workshop.