She was a member of a group of five broadly similar battleships, along with Charles Martel, Jauréguiberry, Carnot, and Masséna, which were ordered in response to the British Royal Sovereign class.

Two British battleships were also sunk by mines that day, and the disaster convinced the Allies to abandon the naval campaign in favor of an amphibious assault on the Gallipoli Peninsula.

The first stage of the program was to be a group of four squadron battleships that were built to different designs but met the same basic characteristics, including armor, armament, and displacement.

She and her half-sisters nevertheless were disappointments in service; Bouvet suffered from stability problems that ultimately contributed to her loss in 1915, and all five of the vessels compared poorly to their British counterparts, particularly their contemporaries of the Majestic class.

This was sufficiently powerful to allow Bouvet's main guns to easily penetrate the armor of most contemporary battleships at the common battle ranges of the day.

Above the belt was 80 mm (3.1 in) thick strake of side armor that created a highly subdivided cofferdam to reduce the risk of flooding from battle damage.

These increases forced compromises elsewhere in the ship's armor protection, most notably the barbettes, which were criticized at the time; nothing could be done, however, due to the strict limit placed on displacement.

Since Bouvet was one of the most modern French battleships in the late 1890s and early 1900s, she spent this time in the Mediterranean Squadron, France's primary fleet.

On 6 March, Bouvet joined the battleships Brennus, Gaulois, Charlemagne, Charles Martel, and Jauréguiberry and four protected cruisers for maneuvers off Golfe-Juan on the Côte d'Azur, including night firing training.

Bouvet departed Toulon on 29 January 1903 in company with the battleships Saint Louis, Gaulois, and Charlemagne, four cruisers, and accompanying destroyers for gunnery training off Golfe-Juan.

Two days later, when the divisions were ordered to change from two columns to a single line ahead for shooting drills, Bouvet failed to take her prescribed position and instead turned too closely to Gaulois.

In October, Bouvet and the rest of the Mediterranean Squadron battleships steamed to Palma de Mallorca, and on their return to Toulon they conducted training exercises.

The following year passed uneventfully for Bouvet, and on 10 April 1906, she, Iéna, and Gaulois were sent to Italy in the aftermath of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

The division returned to France in time for a naval review on 16 September held in Marseilles that included detachments from Britain, Spain, and Italy.

The next day, Admiral Augustin Boué de Lapeyrère ordered the entire French fleet to begin raising steam at 22:15 so the ships could sortie early the following morning.

At the time, the division was commanded by Contre-amiral Émile Paul Amable Guépratte, and it was tasked with guarding against a possible attack by the German battlecruiser Goeben, which instead fled to the Ottoman Empire.

Once the French Army units had completed their crossing by late August, the Group C ships were tasked with patrolling merchant traffic between Tunis and Sicily to prevent contraband shipments to the Central Powers.

Over the coming months, the Triple Entente amassed a large fleet tasked with breaking through the Ottoman defenses that guarded the straits.

During this period, before the start of major offensive operations, the Anglo-French fleet alternated between anchorages at Tenedos and Mudros Bay on the island of Lemnos, and it was tasked with patrolling the entrance to the straits to ensure that Goeben—which had by then been transferred to the Ottoman Navy as Yavuz Sultan Selim—did not attempt to sortie.

The plan called for Ottoman defenses to be neutralized to allow the fleet to enter the Sea of Marmara and attack Constantinople directly.

The first stage of the attack began on 19 February, which saw Bouvet and Suffren, together with the British battlecruiser Inflexible and the pre-dreadnought battleships Albion, Triumph, and Cornwallis, bombard the coastal defenses protecting the entrance of the straits.

[31] Another attempt was made six days later, with Bouvet again spotting for Gaulois; this attack was more successful, and the French and British battleships silenced the outer fortresses, allowing minesweepers to enter the area and begin clearing the minefields protecting the straits.

[32] The French division steamed into the Gulf of Saros on the Aegean coast of the Gallipoli Peninsula on 1 March to scout Ottoman positions in the area.

They then covered the British battleships as they bombarded Ottoman positions in the straits on 5 March, before taking their turn the next day, when they attacked the fortification at Dardanus.

[33] On 18 March, the French and British squadrons made another attack on the straits, directed at the inner ring of fortresses that guarded the narrowest part of the Dardanelles.

Mistakenly believing the Ottoman guns to have been largely neutralized by the British bombardment, Guépratte led his ships to within 9,100 m (10,000 yd) of the inner fortresses and engaged in an artillery duel.

Suffren and Bouvet operated as a pair, taking alternating passes at high speed to make it more difficult for the Ottoman gunners to score hits.

The escorting destroyers and picket boats raced to the scene to pick up her crew, but in the span of just two minutes, Bouvet capsized and sank.

[36] Despite the sinking of Bouvet, the first such loss of the day, the British remained unaware of the minefield, thinking the explosion had been caused by a shell or torpedo.

[36][37] The loss of Bouvet and the two British battleships during the 18 March attack was a major factor in the decision to abandon a naval strategy to take Constantinople, and instead opt for the Gallipoli land campaign.