The Pluton-class minelayers were a pair of ships built just before World War I for the French Navy as their first purpose-built minelayers. They spent the first few months of the war laying minefields off captured Belgian ports and in the English Channel in conjunction with British ships. Pluton remained there for the rest of the war, but Cerbère was transferred to the eastern Mediterranean Sea in 1915. The ship laid minefields off the Syrian coast and the Dardanelles. Later in the war she laid minefields in the southern Adriatic as well. Both ships were struck from the Navy List in 1921 and sold for scrap.