French battleship Vérité Vérité was a pre - dreadnought battleship of the " Liberté " class built by the French Navy . She had three sister ships : " Liberté " , " Justice " , and " Démocratie " . " Vérité " was laid down in April 1903 , launched in May 1907 , and completed in June 1908 , over a year after the revolutionary British battleship made ships like " Vérité " obsolete . She was armed with a main battery of four guns , compared to the ten guns of the same caliber mounted on " Dreadnought " . " Vérité " took the French President on a goodwill trip to Russia in 1908 and visited America in September 1909 . In September 1911 , she was damaged by the explosion that destroyed her sister " Liberté " in Toulon . At the outbreak of World War I in August 1914 , she covered troop convoys from North Africa to France along with the rest of the French Mediterranean Fleet . She spent the rest of the war based at Corfu and later Mudros , without seeing any action at either location . After the end of the war , she was stricken from the naval register and broken up for scrap in 1922 . Design . " Vérité " was laid down at the " Forges et Chantiers de la Gironde " shipyard in Bordeaux in April 1903 , launched on 28 May 1907 , and completed in June 1908 , over a year after the radically innovative British battleship , which rendered the pre - dreadnought s like " Vérité " outdated before they were completed . The ship was long between perpendiculars and had a beam of and a full - load draft of . She displaced up to at full load . The ship had a crew of between 739 and 769 officers and enlisted men . " Vérité " was powered by three vertical triple expansion engines with twenty - two Belleville boiler s . They were rated at and provided a top speed of . Coal storage amounted to . " Vérité " s main battery consisted of four Canon de 305 mm Modèle 1893 / 96 gun s mounted in two twin gun turret s , one forward and one aft . The secondary battery consisted of ten Canon de 194 mm Modèle 1902 guns ; six were mounted in single turrets , and four in casemate s in the hull . She also carried thirteen 9 - pounder guns and ten 3 - pounders . Additionally , the ship was armed with two torpedo tube s submerged in the hull . The ship ' s main belt was thick and the main battery was protected by up to of armor . The conning tower had thick sides . Service history . " Vérité " s first major assignment assignment was received in late July 1908 , a month after she joined the French fleet . She carried the President of France Armand Fallières to Reval , Russia , arriving on 27 July . There , Fallières visited with the Russian Tsar , Nicholas II , who inspected " Vérité " . She joined " Liberté " and " Justice " for a visit to the United States for the Hudson - Fulton Celebration in September 1909 . The three ships , representing France during the celebrations and commanded by Admiral Jules le Pord , were the first foreign ships to arrive . The ships departed from Brest and reached New York seven days later , having run at an average of ; the performance of the ships ' propulsion systems was regarded as satisfactory by contemporary naval experts , including the United States Naval Institute . In early 1911 , the French Navy conducted experiments with wireless telegraphy , and used " Vérité " and " Justice " for the tests . The wireless transmitters could pick up messages as far as away . On 25 September 1911 , " Liberté " was destroyed by an accidental explosion in Toulon , the result of the spontaneous combustion of nitrocellulose gel in her ammunition magazines . Debris hurled by the explosion damaged several nearby battleships , including " Vérité " . At the outbreak of World War I in August 1914 , " Vérité " was assigned to the 1st Division of the 2nd Squadron in the Mediterranean , along with " République " and " Patrie " . The French fleet was initially used to cover the movement of French troops — the XIX Corps — from Algeria to metropolitan France . As a result , the fleet was far out of position to catch the German battlecruiser , which , contrary to French expectations , steamed to Constantinople rather than attempt to interfere with the troop transports . For the majority of the war , the French used their main fleet to keep the Austro - Hungarian fleet bottled up in the Adriatic Sea . In 1914 she participated in the Battle of Antivari , where the battle line caught the Austro - Hungarian cruiser by surprise and sank her . The French battleships then bombarded Austrian fortifications at Cattaro in an attempt to draw out the Austro - Hungarian fleet , which refused to take the bait . The French operations in the area were hampered by a lack of a suitable base close to the mouth of the Adriatic ; the British had given the French free access to Malta , but it was hundreds of miles away . The Austrians also possessed several submarine s , one of which torpedoed the dreadnought " Jean Bart " in December 1914 . The threat from underwater weapons greatly limited French naval activities in the Adriatic . As the war progressed , the French eventually settled on Corfu as their primary naval base in the area . Later in the war , " Vérité " was sent to Mudros along with her sister ships . After the end of the war , " Vérité " was stricken from the naval register in 1922 and subsequently broken up for scrap .