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Bucentaure was an 86-gun ship of the line of the French Navy, and the lead ship of her class. She was the flagship of Vice-Admiral Latouche Tréville, who died on board on 18 August 1804, and later of Vice-Admiral Pierre-Charles Villeneuve as the flagship of the Franco-Spanish fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar.
Bucentaure was named after the Venetian state barge Bucintoro which was destroyed by Napoleon after the fall of the Republic of Venice in 1797. While the Venetian name is of uncertain etymology (it may have originated in the bucinatores aboard who blew their instruments to herald the arrival of the Doge), the French Bucentaure's figurehead depicted a bucentaur: a mythical, centaur-like creature with the body of a bull and the head of a man.