The designer Émile Bertin had sketched a strange ship. For a battle ship, it was actually too little and with only two heavy tubes to weakly equipped. An only 1.2 meter of free board high, only the before ship had showed the hull the usual height. Over the Schwimmkörper, a covers narrow two was set high construction, that passed of the before ship over about three-quarters of the hull length. The hull was protected through a 80 mm strong tank cover out of Harvey-Nickelstahl, passed that side tank by this cover to 1.3 meters under the water line. It was above this mittschiffs 280 mm and at the ship envoy 180 mm strong. Within that, extended constructed itself mittschiffs an about quadratic 114 mm strongly gepanzerte Kasematte, at whose corners four of the 14 cm-guns stood, two further canons of this caliber were placed on that. The seventh 14 cm-gun stood superelevates at the aft end of the construction in a single tower. A reform meant the one cover height beneath the tank cover present second tank cover that was pulled 1 to 2 meter within the board wall according to halbkreisförmig below and ended in the double ground. This Torpedoschott sat to be sure probably too close to the board wall in order to offer actual protection in the emergency.