Lavoisier was a small French cruiser, one of a class of three, begun 1895, launched 1897 and completed in 1898. She was build at Rochefort along with her near sister Galilée. The last ship of the class, Linois, differed in many ways from the first two and was build instead at La Seyne. With her high freeboard she could operate relatively easily in the full ocean and would have served well, for the time, as a commerce raider. Additionally, Lavoisier, but not her sisters, was built to burn oil along with the coal – an unusual and early use of this feature. Perhaps this is why she remained on the lists until 1920 although her sisters were both scrapped by 1911.      Postcard photos show her in the distinctive black lower parts with brown upper works as well as in the colonial garb of very light gray overall. She and Galilée were nearly identical in appearance but Lavoisier can be distinguished by the ladder she carried starboard and forward side of the forward funnel. It should be noted that the projecting bow is sometimes lumped under the designation of “ram bow,” but this is inaccurate for Lavoisier as she had no reinforcing that would allow her to ram without considerable damage to herself. These wonderful and characteristic bows that the French applied to their ships during the pre-dreadnought era rarely have any listed function – although for the battleship Masséna the form was added in order to give more flotation to the bow which would have dipped under the load of the turret machinery.  It was not until the beginning of the next century that French ships began to be designed without this flair. With features such as this I think it is fair to claim that these ships represent works of art wrought in iron and steel where form was not entirely sublimated to function. - Golden Bear