Kléber was one of three armored cruisers built for the French Navy () in the first decade of the 20th century. Designed for overseas service and armed with eight guns, the ships were smaller and less powerfully armed than their predecessors. Completed in 1904, Kléber was initially assigned to the Mediterranean Squadron () before she was transferred to the Atlantic Division () three years later, where she often served as a flagship. The ship was reduced to reserve in 1909–1910 before she was sent to the Far East in 1911. Kléber returned to France two years later and was again placed in reserve.
As tensions rose shortly before the beginning of World War I in August 1914, the ship was reactivated. When the war began she was assigned to defend Allied shipping in the English Channel and intercept German ships attempting to pass through. Transferred back to the Mediterranean in 1915, Kléber played a minor role on the periphery of the Gallipoli Campaign until a resurgence in German commerce raiding caused the Allies to transfer more cruisers to the Atlantic to protect their shipping in mid-1916. The ship was deemed surplus to requirements the following year; on her way back to France to decommission, Kléber struck a naval mine on 27 June and sank with the loss of 38 crewmen.
Design and description
The Dupleix-class ships were much smaller and more lightly armed than the preceding . They measured long overall with a beam of and had a maximum draft of . The cruisers displaced as designed. They normally had a crew of 19 officers and 550 enlisted men, but accommodated 24 officers and 583 enlisted men when serving as a flagship.
The sister ships' propulsion machinery consisted of three vertical triple-expansion steam engines, each driving a single propeller shaft, using steam provided by water-tube boilers, but the types of machinery differed between them. Kléber had three-cylinder engines that used 20 Niclausse boilers at a working pressure . The engines of all three ships were designed to produce a total of that was intended to give them a maximum speed of . Only Kléber exceeded their designed speed during her sea trials on 14 October 1903, attaining from . The sisters carried up to of coal and could steam for at a speed of .
Armament and protection
The ships of the Dupleix class had a main armament that consisted of eight quick-firing (QF) Canon de 164.7 mm Modèle 1893–1896 guns. They were mounted in four twin gun turrets, one each fore and aft of the superstructure and a pair of wing turrets amidships. The cruisers' secondary armament consisted of four QF Canon de Modèle de 1893 guns on single mounts in unprotected casemates in the hull. For defense against torpedo boats, they carried ten and four Hotchkiss guns, all of which were on single mounts. The ship were also equipped with two above-water torpedo tubes, one on each broadside.
The nickel steel armor belt of the Dupleix-class cruisers covered the entire waterline length of the ship except for of the stern. The belt armor was thick, although it reduced to in front of the forward turret. The curved protective deck had a total thickness of on the flat and on the upper part of the curved portion where it met the bottom edge of the belt armor. The face and sides of the gun turrets were protected by Harvey face-hardened armor plates. The armor protection of the gun barbettes was thick. The sides of the elliptical conning tower were 100 to 120 millimeters thick.