French cruiser D'Iberville
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D'Iberville was the lead ship of the D'Iberville class of torpedo cruisers built for the French Navy in the 1890s. The class is also sometimes classified as torpedo gunboats or torpedo avisos. The D'Iberville-class ships were a development of earlier torpedo cruisers, with the chief improvement being a significantly higher speed. D'Iberville was armed with six 450 mm (17.7 in) torpedo tubes and a single 100 mm (3.9 in) gun as her primary offensive armament, though she had all of her torpedo tubes removed in 1896, just two years after entering service.
D'Iberville, early in her career, c. 1895–1896 | |
History | |
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France | |
Name | D'Iberville |
Builder | Chantiers de la Loire |
Laid down | August 1891 |
Launched | 11 September 1892 |
Commissioned | 1894 |
Stricken | July 1919 |
Fate | Broken up, 1920 |
General characteristics | |
Class and type | D'Iberville-class torpedo cruiser |
Displacement | 952 long tons (967 t) |
Length | 80 m (262 ft 6 in) pp |
Beam | 8.08 to 8.2 m (26 ft 6 in to 26 ft 11 in) |
Draft | 3.45 m (11 ft 4 in) |
Installed power |
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Propulsion | |
Range | 6,000 nmi (11,000 km; 6,900 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph) |
Complement | 140–143 |
Armament |
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Armor |
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D'Iberville had a fairly limited career, serving with the Mediterranean Squadron from 1895 to 1897. During this time, her chief activities consisted of annual fleet maneuvers conducted every summer. By 1903, the ship lay at Toulon awaiting repairs to her boilers, which had proved troublesome in service. The ship was reactivated for a deployment to French Indochina in Southeast Asia by 1911. She was still on station there at the start of World War I in August 1914, and she was sent to patrol for German vessels known to be in the area. She was present for the Battle of Penang in October 1914, where the German light cruiser SMS Emden raided the port, sank the Russian protected cruiser Zhemchug, and fled before D'Iberville or the other warships in the harbor could effectively engage the German vessel. D'Iberville was later transferred to French Algeria, remaining there on patrol duty until 1917. She was ultimately stricken from the naval register in 1919 and sold to ship breakers in 1920.