Amiral Charner spent most of her career in the Mediterranean, although she was sent to China during the Boxer Rebellion of 1900-01. Together with her sisters, Chanzy and Latouche-Tréville, the ship was assigned to the International Squadron off the island of Crete during the 1897-1898 upring there and the Greco-Turkish War of 1897 to protect French interests and citizens. With the exception of Bruix, the sisters spent most of the first decade of the 20th century as training ships or in reserve. Bruix served in the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean, and in the Far East before World War I. In 1902 she aided survivors of the devastating eruption of Mount Pelée on the island of Martinique and spent several years as guardship at Crete, protecting French interests in the region in the early 1910s. Chanzy was transferred to French Indochina in 1906. She ran aground off the Chinese coast in mid-1907, where she proved impossible to refloat and was destroyed in place after her crew was rescued without loss.