were barbette ships, a type of ironclad battleship. The ship introduced several advances for the French fleet: new, 42-caliber guns arranged in turrets forward and aft of the superstructure, the first use of homogeneous steel armor, and the first Belleville boilers. Other changes included the adoption of a thin upper strake of armor to protect against quick-firing guns and the abandonment of the ram bow. Brennus formed the basis for the subsequent group of five broadly similar battleships built to the same design specifications, begun with , though they reverted to the armament layout of the earlier Magentas which saw the main guns distributed in single turrets in a lozenge (quadrilateral) pattern. General characteristics and machinery Brennus was long between perpendiculars and long overall. The ship had a beam of , a draft of . and displaced at deep load, after her reconstruction. Brennus proved to be grossly overweight; during her initial sea trials in 1893, her draft was greater than it should have been, and this was not in a fully loaded condition. The increased draft submerged most of the ship's armored belt, rendering it largely useless. Her hull was subdivided by 18 watertight bulkheads and she had a double bottom that extended over the full length of the hull except at the bow. Brennus had a crew of 667 officers and enlisted men. The ship suffered from very poor stability, largely a result of her massive superstructure that placed a great deal of weight high in the ship. These problems were not fully solved by extensive reconstruction between 1893 and 1896, which contributed to a short career. Her first stability trial was conducted on 17 June 1893 with all her guns traversed to starboard and her entire crew mustered on the same side; Brennus took on a 28° list and the barrels of her 164.7 mm casemate guns were half-submerged. Her metacentric height was calculated at during this incident. The ship's excessive topweight from her massive superstructure, heavy military masts and tall funnels contributed to the problem, together with the pronounced tumblehome of her hull. Brennus had a pair of four-cylinder vertical triple-expansion steam engines, each driving a single , four-bladed propeller, using steam supplied by 32 Belleville water-tube boilers at a working pressure of . The boilers exhausted into a pair of large funnels located amidships. The decision to fit Brennus with water-tube boilers was made in