another technical mission to Britain to look at Babcock & Wilcox's design in April 1907, but did not make a decision in favor of French-built boilers until 3 June 1908, after all the ships had been laid down. The design was estimated to displace before the adoption of the heavier Modèle 1906 gun required a new and larger turret to handle the gun which meant that the turret's supporting structure also had to be reinforced. In an unsuccessful bid to reduce the displacement, many sections of armor were reduced in thickness, but the ships exceeded even the design estimate as built. General description The Dantons were significantly larger than their predecessors of the Liberté class. The ships were long at the waterline and long overall, over longer than the earlier ships. They had a beam of and a draft of at deep load. The Danton-class ships were slightly overweight; they actually displaced at normal load. This was over more than the earlier ships. When serving as flagships, their crew consisted of 40 officers and 875 enlisted men. Without an admiral and his staff embarked, the crew numbered 28 officers and 824 enlisted men. Propulsion The Danton-class ships had four license-built Parsons direct-drive steam turbines, each of which drove a single propeller, using steam from 26 coal-fired Belleville or Niclausse boilers. Each boiler type was installed on three ships of the class. The boilers were housed in two large compartments, 17 in the forward boiler room that used the three forward funnels and 9 in the aft boiler which exhausted through the rear pair of funnels. The turbines were amidships, between the boiler rooms, in three compartments. The center engine room housed the turbines for the two center propeller shafts and the turbine for each of the outer shafts had their own compartment flanking the center engine room. The turbines were rated at a total of using steam provided by the boilers at a working pressure of . Designed for a maximum speed of , they handily exceeded that during their sea trials with speeds ranging from . The Niclausse boilers were not well suited for use with turbines and burned more coal than the Belleville boilers. They also produced copious amounts of smoke and sparks; occasionally even flames from incomplete combustion of the coal. The Dantons carried a maximum of of coal which gave them an estimated range from at