French battleship Démocratie 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 made ships like " Démocratie " obsolete . She was armed with a main battery of four 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 off 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 . Design . " 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, over a year after the revolutionary British battleship , which rendered the pre - dreadnought s like " Démocratie " outdated before they were completed .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 . " 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 boiler s . They were rated at and provided a top speed of . Coal storage amounted to . " Démocratie " 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 , and had 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 . In August 1910 , the 1st Squadron of the Mediterranean fleet conducted a gunnery practice using the old ironclad " Fulminant " as a target ; " Démocratie " scored 22 . 7 percent hits , the second best performance in the squadron and surpassed only by her sister " Justice " . During a fleet exercise on 28 May 1914 , " Démocratie " collided with the battleship when the latter vessel lost power . " Suffren " was only lightly damaged , with her port anchor and hawsepipe carried away . At the outbreak of World War I in August 1914 , " Démocratie " was assigned to the 1st Division of the 2nd Squadron in the Mediterranean , along with " Justice " . 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 . 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 that was hundreds of miles away . The Austrians also possessed several submarine s , one of which torpedoed the dreadnought " Jean Bart " in December 1914 . This 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 , " Démocratie " was sent to Mudros along with her sister ships to reinforce the blockade of the Dardanelles . Shortly after the end of the war , " Démocratie " , " Justice " , and a destroyer joined an Allied fleet ( including the British dreadnought s and and the Italian battleship " Roma " ) that was sent to the Black Sea port of Sevastopol . They oversaw the enforcement of the terms of the Armistice with Germany ; the Germans had previously seized Russian naval units and stationed occupation forces there under the terms of the Treaty of Brest - Litovsk . The French contingent provided crews for a pair of Russian destroyers and two German U - boat s , and the other Allied ships similarly activated Russian and German vessels to secure the area . " Démocratie " ultimately was stricken from the naval register in 1921 and sold to ship - breakers .