page_title: French battleship Gaulois
section_title: Fate
hierarchical_section_title: French battleship Gaulois / Construction and career / World War I / Fate
caption_attribution_description: English: Sinking of the French battleship Gaulois off Crete, late 1916. Français&#160;: Torpillage du cuirassé français le Gaulois au large de la Crête, fin 1916. Image publiée par l'Illustration en février 1917.
context_page_description: Gaulois was one of three Charlemagne-class pre-dreadnought battleships built for the French Navy in the mid-1890s. Completed in 1899, she spent most of her career assigned to the Mediterranean Squadron. The ship accidentally rammed two other French warships early in her career, although neither was seriously damaged, nor was Gaulois.
  Following the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, Gaulois escorted troop convoys from French North Africa to France for a month and a half. She was ordered to the Dardanelles in November 1914 to guard against a sortie into the Mediterranean by the ex-German battlecruiser Yavuz Sultan Selim. In 1915, Gaulois joined British ships in bombarding Ottoman fortifications. She was badly damaged during one such bombardment in March and had to beach herself to avoid sinking. She was refloated and sent to Toulon for permanent repairs. Gaulois returned to the Dardanelles and covered the Allied evacuation in January 1916. She was en route to the Dardanelles after a refit in France when she was torpedoed and sunk on 27 December by a German submarine; four crewmen were lost.
context_section_description: By 27 December, Gaulois had reached the Sea of Crete and was off the southern coast of Greece when she was torpedoed by the German submarine UB-47 at 08:03 despite being escorted by the torpedo boat Dard and two armed trawlers. The single torpedo hit slightly abaft the mainmast and started uncontrollable flooding below the waterline. It killed two crewmen and another pair drowned as they attempted to abandon ship; the rest of the crew was successfully rescued. The ship capsized at 09:03 and sank eight minutes later off Cape Maleas at 36°15′N 23°42′E in 480–500 metres (1,570–1,640 ft) of water.
caption: A drawing of the sinking Gaulois with the trawlers taking off the crew
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