D’Entrecasteaux

D’Entrecasteaux

D’Entrecasteaux was a protected cruiser completed for the French Navy in 1898. After service in World War 1, the obsolete cruiser was employed as a training ship for signalmen, shipwrights and reserve officers at Brest from 1919-1921. In 1922 D’Entrecasteaux was loaned to Belgium for use as a floating barracks. The French justified this transfer as being outside the restrictions of the Washington Naval Treaty on the basis that this vessel had been disarmed and was immobile and therefore had been deprived of its character as a combat ship, and this interpretation was accepted by default by Great Britain. The hulk was returned by Belgium to France in June 1926.

In 1927 France proposed to transfer D’Entrecasteaux, recently returned by the Belgians after four years of use, to Poland for use as a training ship. The Poles agreed to pay 1,622,745 francs for the vessel, its fittings, and towing it to Gdynia.

After deciding to sell D’Entrecasteaux, the French, to abide by the WNT, notified the other signatories. Once again Britain did not object to the transfer, on the grounds that they could not now do so, having failed to object to the transfer to Belgium. A Foreign Office official remarked: ‘if there’s any question about this the US can raise it.’ The ship was therefore towed to Poland, where it was used as a stationary training ship, and harbour flagship of the Fleet Commander under the names Karl Ladislaw IV and then Bałtyk. In 1933 the ship was hulked and permanently moored at Oksywie naval base (near Gdynia), with concrete blocks placed under her keel to support her. The hulk was captured by the Germans on 19 September 1939, and broken up by them in 1941-42.