Amiral Baudin was an ironclad barbette ship of the French Navy built in the late 1870s and 1880s. She was the lead ship of the , which included one other vessel, . The Amiral Baudin class was designed in response to Italian naval expansion, and carried a main battery of three guns all mounted in open barbettes on the centerline. The armament was chosen after public pressure to compete with the very large guns mounted on the latest Italian ironclads. Amiral Baudin was laid down in 1879 and was completed in 1888. Amiral Baudin spent most of her career in the Mediterranean Fleet, where she conducted fleet training exercises each year. Her career passed fairly uneventfully, though she was involved in a grounding in 1895. She was modernized between 1896 and 1898, which included removing her center main battery gun and barbette and installing a battery of light quick-firing guns in its place. After returning to service, she was transferred to the Northern Squadron, based in the English Channel, where the routine of peacetime training maneuvers continued. Withdrawn from active duty in 1903, she saw no further service and was stricken from the naval register in 1909. Converted into a barracks ship that year, she served in that capacity just through 1910 before being sold to ship breakers in early 1911. Design Amiral Baudin and Formidable were designed in the late 1870s as part of a naval construction program that began under the post-Franco-Prussian War fleet plan of 1872. By 1877, the Italian fleet under Benedetto Brin had begun building powerful new ironclads of the and es, which demanded a French response, beginning with the ironclad of 1877. The Italian vessels carried significantly larger guns than Amiral Duperré, which prompted calls from the Chamber of Deputies to increase the caliber of future ship armament. This resulted in the development of the gun used in the Amiral Baudin class, which was in most other respects, similar to Amiral Duperré. Amiral Baudin was long at the waterline, with a beam of and a draft of . She displaced . She was fitted with a pair of pole masts equipped with spotting tops for her main battery guns. The crew consisted of 625 officers and enlisted men. Her propulsion machinery consisted of two compound steam engines with steam provided by twelve coal-burning fire-tube boilers. Her engines were rated to produce for a top