The Amiral Charner was an armoured cruiser of the French Navy, lead ship of her class

Amiral Charner class armoured cruiser

The Amiral Charner class was a type of armoured cruiser of the French Navy which saw service during the First World War.- Ships : - sunk by torpedo, 1916. - scrapped, 1920. - sunk, 1907. - scrapped, 1926.- References :...

.

In 1896, she was sent to the Mediterranean to operate the station off Crete. From 1901, she operated in the Far East. In 1905, she was put in the reserve in Toulon.

At the outbreak of the First World War, she was sent to the defence of the Suez Canal. In December, in the context of the Noemvriana

Noemvriana

The Noemvriana of November–December 1916 was a political dispute, which led to an armed confrontation in Athens between the royalist government of Greece and the Allies forces over the issue of Greece's neutrality during World War I....

, she invaded Kastelorizo

Kastelorizo

Kastelorizo, , is a Greek island and municipality located in the southeastern Mediterranean. It lies roughly off the south coast of Turkey, about 570 km southeast of Athens and east of Rhodes, almost halfway between Rhodes and Antalya and to Cyprus...

, along with .

On 8 February 1916, off Beirut

Beirut

Beirut is the capital and largest city of Lebanon, with a population ranging from 1 million to more than 2 million . Located on a peninsula at the midpoint of Lebanon's Mediterranean coastline, it serves as the country's largest and main seaport, and also forms the Beirut Metropolitan...

, Amiral Charner was torpedoed by German U-boat and sank in only two minutes. Most of the crew went down with the ship; only quarter-master Cariou survived, rescued on 13 February after drifting on a raft with 13 comrades.