Henri IV was a pre-dreadnought battleship of the French Navy built to test some of the ideas of the prominent naval architect Louis-Émile Bertin.

She was sent to reinforce the Allied naval force in the Dardanelles campaign of 1915, although some of her secondary armament had been removed for transfer to Serbia in 1914.

Henri IV was designed by the famous French naval architect Louis-Émile Bertin to evaluate some of his ideas.

Her rear hull had only 4 feet (1.2 m) of freeboard, although she was built up to the normal upper deck height amidships and at the bow for better sea-keeping and to provide for her crew.

[2] Henri IV had three vertical triple-expansion steam engines, each driving one propeller shaft.

The engines were rated at 11,500 indicated horsepower (8,600 kW) using steam provided by 24 Niclausse boilers and gave a top speed of 17 knots (31 km/h; 20 mph).

This system was based on experiments conducted in 1894 and was more modern than that used in the Russian battleship Tsesarevich although it was still too close to the side of the ship.

[1] Henri IV was laid down at Cherbourg on 15 July 1897 and launched on 23 August 1899, but did not enter service until September 1903,[1] at a cost of ₣15,660,000 francs.

[8] After the Italian destroyer Fulmine stopped and thoroughly searched the French mail steamer Favignano for contraband on 25 January 1912 during the Italo-Turkish War, Henri IV and four French torpedo boats deployed from Bizerte to the southeastern border of Tunisia to stop contraband traffic between Tunisia and the Ottoman Empire and enforce France's obligations as a neutral country.

This squadron was intended to attack Ottoman positions and lines of communication in Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and the Sinai Peninsula.