Liberté-class battleship

Liberté in New York City in September 1909
Class overview
Name:	Liberté-class battleship
Operators:	French Navy
Preceded by:	République class
Succeeded by:	Danton class
Built:	1903–1908
In service:	1908–1922
Completed:	4
Lost:	1
General characteristics
Type:	Pre-dreadnought battleship
Displacement:	14,860 t (14,630 long tons)
Length:	133.81 m (439 ft 0 in) (pp)
Beam:	24.26 m (79 ft 7 in)
Draft:	8.41 m (27 ft 7 in)
Installed power:	18,500 shp (13,800 kW)
Propulsion:	3 Shafts 3 Vertical triple-expansion steam engines
Speed:	19 knots (35 km/h; 22 mph)
Complement:	739–769
Armament:	4 × Canon de 305 mm Modèle 1893/96 guns (12 in) 10 × 194 mm (7.6 in) guns 2 × 450 mm (18 in) torpedo tubes
Armor:	Belt: 280 mm (11 in) Turrets: 350 mm (14 in) Conning tower: 305 mm (12.0 in)

The Liberté class was a group of four pre-dreadnought battleships of the French Navy. The class comprised Liberté, the lead ship, Justice, Vérité, and Démocratie. The ships were in most respects repeats of the previous République class, and the major difference was the adoption of 194-millimeter (7.6 in) guns for the secondary battery, rather than the 164 mm (6.5 in) guns of the République class. Due to their similarity, the two classes are sometimes treated as one basic design. The four Liberté-class ships were built between 1903 and 1908; they were completed over a year after the revolutionary British HMS Dreadnought, which rendered the French ships obsolete before they entered service.

In September 1909, three of the ships, Liberté, Justice, and Vérité visited the United States for the Hudson-Fulton Celebration. Two years later, Liberté's forward magazines exploded in Toulon harbor, destroying the ship and killing approximately 250 of her crew. The three surviving ships saw action early in World War I at the Battle of Antivari, and spent the remainder blockading the Austro-Hungarian Navy in the Adriatic and were later stationed at Mudros in the Aegean. They were stricken from the naval register in 1921–1922 and broken up for scrap. Liberté was left on the bottom of Toulon harbor until 1925, when she was raised and broken up for scrap.