French battleship Démocratie
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| History | |
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 France
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| Name: | Démocratie |
| Namesake: | Democracy |
| Laid down: | 1 May 1903 |
| Launched: | 30 April 1904 |
| Commissioned: | January 1908 |
| Struck: | 1921 |
| Fate: | Broken up for scrap |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | Liberté-class pre-dreadnought battleship |
| Displacement: | 14,860 t (14,630 long tons; 16,380 short tons) |
| Length: | 133.81 m (439.0 ft) pp |
| Beam: | 24.26 m (79.6 ft) |
| Draft: | 8.41 m (27.6 ft) |
| Propulsion: | 3 triple-expansion steam engines, 18,500 shp (13,800 kW) |
| Speed: | 19 knots (35 km/h) |
| Complement: | 739–769 |
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Démocratie was a pre-dreadnought battleship of the Liberté class built by the French Navy. She had three sister ships: Liberté, Justice, and Vérité. Démocratie was laid down in May 1903, launched in April 1904, and completed in January 1908, over a year after the revolutionary British battleship HMS Dreadnought made ships like Démocratie obsolete. She was armed with a main battery of four 305 mm (12.0 in) guns, compared to the ten guns of the same caliber mounted on Dreadnought.
Despite her out-dated design, Démocratie served with the French Mediterranean Fleet throughout her career, including during World War I. She participated in the Battle of Antivari in late August 1914, and spent the majority of the war based on the coast of Greece, in Corfu and Mudros, to keep the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman navies bottled up in port, though she saw no further action. After the end of the war, she went into the Black Sea to assist in the enforcement of the terms of the Armistice with Germany. Démocratie was stricken in 1921 and subsequently broken up for scrap.
Démocratie was laid down at the Arsenal de Brest shipyard on 1 May 1903, launched on 30 April 1904, and completed in January 1908, over a year after the revolutionary British battleship HMS Dreadnought, which rendered the pre-dreadnoughts like Démocratie outdated before they were completed. The ship was 133.81 meters (439 ft 0 in) long between perpendiculars and had a beam of 24.26 m (79 ft 7 in) and a full-load draft of 8.41 m (27 ft 7 in). She displaced up to 14,489 metric tons (14,260 long tons; 15,971 short tons) at full load. Démocratie had a crew of between 739 and 769 officers and enlisted men. The ship's propulsion system consisted of three vertical triple expansion engines with twenty-two Belleville boilers. They were rated at 18,500 indicated horsepower (13,800 kW) and provided a top speed of 19 knots (35 km/h; 22 mph). Coal storage amounted to 1,800 t (1,800 long tons; 2,000 short tons).
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