French cruiser Châteaurenault (1898)

Châteaurenault was a large protected cruiser built for the French Navy in the late 1890s and early 1900s. She was intended to serve as a long-range commerce raider, designed according to the theories of the Jeune École, which favored a strategy of attacking Britain's extensive merchant shipping network instead of engaging in an expensive naval arms race with the Royal Navy. As such, Châteaurenault was built with a relatively light armament of just eight medium-caliber guns, but was given a long cruising range and the appearance of a large passenger liner, which would help her to evade detection while raiding merchant shipping.

Châteaurenault spent much of her early career overseas in French Indochina, deploying there immediately after her commissioning in 1902 through mid 1904, and then again in 1905–1906. She was reduced to reserve in 1907 and then modified to serve as a fast minelayer the following year. She was assigned to the Reserve Division of the Mediterranean Squadron. She saw little further activity until the outbreak of World War I in July 1914.

The ship was mobilized into the 2nd Light Squadron and based in the western English Channel. She was moved to the Mediterranean Sea in early 1915 and then to French Senegal to search for German commerce raiders in early 1916. Having been transferred back to the Mediterranean by October 1916, she rescued survivors from the troopship SS Gallia that had been sunk by a German U-boat. Châteaurenault was herself torpedoed and sunk in December 1917, but she sank slowly enough for her crew to be taken off by a pair of destroyers, which in turn sank the German submarine.