were also sunk by mines that day, and the disaster convinced the Allies to abandon the naval campaign in favor of an amphibious assault on the Gallipoli Peninsula. Design In 1889, the British Royal Navy passed the Naval Defence Act that resulted in the construction of the eight s; this major expansion of naval power led the French government to pass its reply, the (Naval Law) of 1890. The law called for a total of twenty-four "" (squadron battleships) and a host of other vessels, including coastal defense battleships, cruisers, and torpedo boats. The first stage of the program was to be a group of four squadron battleships that were built to different designs but met the same basic characteristics, including armor, armament, and displacement. The naval high command issued the basic requirements on 24 December 1889; displacement would not exceed , the primary armament was to consist of and guns, the belt armor should be thick, and the ships should maintain a top speed of . The secondary battery was to be either or caliber, with as many guns fitted as space would allow. The general similarity of the ships led some observers to group them together as a ship class, though the authors of Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships point out that the vessels had "sufficient differences to prevent them from being considered as one class." The basic design for the ships was based on the previous battleship , but instead of mounting the main battery all on the centerline, the ships used the lozenge arrangement of the earlier vessel , which moved two of the main battery guns to single turrets on the wings. Although the navy had stipulated that displacement could be up to 14,000 t, political considerations, namely parliamentary objections to increases in naval expenditures, led the designers to limit displacement to around . Five naval architects submitted proposals to the competition; Charles Ernest Huin prepared the design for Bouvet. He had also designed her half-sister , upon which the design for Bouvet was based. Before work on Charles Martel had begun, the naval command asked Huin to design an improved version. He completed the plans for the ship, which was slightly larger than her half-sisters, on 20 May, and the Navy awarded the contract for the ship on 8 October 1892. Bouvet proved to be the most successful of the five ships, and