French cruiser Dupuy de Lôme Dupuy de Lôme was an armoured cruiser built for the French Navy ( " Marine Nationale " ) during the late 1880s and 1890s . She is considered by some to be the world ' s first armoured cruiser and was intended to attack enemy merchant ships . The ship was named after the naval architect Henri Dupuy de Lôme . " Dupuy de Lôme " s completion was delayed by almost two years by problems with her boilers , but she was finally commissioned in 1895 and assigned to the Northern Squadron ( " Escadre du Nord " ) , based at Brest , for most of her career . The ship made a number of visits to foreign ports before she began a lengthy reconstruction in 1902 . By the time this was completed in 1906 , the cruiser was regarded as obsolete and " Dupuy de Lôme " was placed in reserve , aside from one assignment in Morocco . The ship was sold to the Peruvian Navy in 1912 , but they never paid the last two instalments and the ship remained inactive at Brest during World War I . The French agreed take the ship back in 1917 , keeping the money already paid , and they sold her in 1918 to a Belgian shipping company that converted her into a freighter . Renamed " Péruvier " , the ship ' s engines broke down and she had to be towed to her destination where part of her cargo of coal was discovered to be on fire during her maiden voyage as a merchant vessel in 1920 . Deemed uneconomical to repair , " Péruvier " was towed to Antwerp and later scrapped in 1923 . Design and description . " Dupuy de Lôme " was designed to fill the commerce - raiding strategy of the Jeune École . Considered by some the first true armoured cruiser , she was superior to existing British and Italian protected cruiser s , especially in her relatively thick steel armour . She could control the engagement range with her superior speed and her heavy armament of quick - firing gun s , all of which were mounted in gun turret s , was in marked contrast to her intended opponents who mounted their guns in lightly protected casemate s or pivot mounts . The ship measured between perpendiculars , with a beam of . " Dupuy de Lôme " had a mean draught of and displaced at normal load . At deep load , she displaced and had a metacentric height of only . This gave the ship a long , slow roll and made her an uncertain gunnery platform . Her long , cut - away bow resembled a spur - type ram , but was not armoured . It was reduced in profile to reduce blast damage when the forward guns were fired . " Dupuy de Lôme " was fitted with two large military masts . She had three triple - expansion steam engine s , a vertical type for the centre shaft and horizontal types for the outboard shafts . Each engine drove a single propeller shaft , with propellers in diameter on the outboard shaft and a propeller on the centre shaft . Steam for the engines was provided by 11 Amirauté fire - tube boiler s and they were rated at a total of . The ship had a designed speed of , but during sea trials on 2 April 1895 the engines only produced that gave a maximum speed of . " Dupuy de Lôme " carried up to of coal and could steam for at a speed of . " Dupuy de Lôme " s main armament consisted of two 45 - calibre Canon de 194 mm Modèle 1887 guns that were mounted in single gun turret s , one on each broadside amidships . Her secondary armament comprised six 45 - calibre Canon de 164 mm Modèle 1887 guns , three each in single gun turrets at the bow and stern . The three turrets at the stern were all on the upper deck and could interfere with each other . For anti - torpedo boat defence , she carried ten and four Hotchkiss gun s . She was also armed with four pivoting torpedo tube s ; two mounted on each broadside above water . The whole side of the ship was protected by of steel armour , from the bottom edge of the protective deck below the waterline to the edge of the weather deck . The curved protective deck had a total thickness of and did not rise above the ship ' s waterline . Protecting the boiler rooms , engine rooms , and magazine s below it was a splinter deck thick . The space between the protective and splinter decks could be filled with coal to increase the effective thickness of the ship ' s armour . It was very cramped there and the coal was very difficult to access . A watertight internal cofferdam , filled with cellulose , ran the length of " Dupuy de Lôme " from the protective deck to a height of above the waterline . Below the protective deck the ship was divided by 13 watertight transverse bulkheads with three more above the protective deck . The ship ' s conning tower was protected by and her turrets by 100 mm of armour . Service . " Dupuy de Lôme " was laid down at the Brest shipyard on 4 July 1888 and she was launched on 27 October 1890 . A number of her forged steel armour plates proved to be defective during tests as the metallurgical techniques to harden it were still under development , but most plates were accepted anyway . The ship was commissioned for preliminary sea trials on 1 April 1892 and one boiler tube burst on 20 June , burning 16 men . The necessary modifications to fix the problem delayed the ship ' s completion by almost a year . Further testing in October 1893 , showed that " Dupuy de Lôme " s engines could only attain during a 24 - hour trial and that the boilers were structurally unsound . The manufacturer agreed to replace them , but the necessary work delayed the ship ' s completion by another year . She was commissioned again for a new set of sea trials on 15 November 1894 and proved reasonably satisfactory . " Dupuy de Lôme " was finally commissioned on 15 May 1895 and was assigned to the Northern Squadron , based on the Atlantic coast . She represented France , together with the ironclad and the cruiser , during the opening ceremony for the Kiel Canal the following month . She made port visits in Spain in June 1896 and escorted the Russian Imperial yacht into Cherbourg when Nicholas II of Russia began a state visit on 5 October . The ship escorted the President of France , Félix Faure , when he visited Russia in April 1897 . Bilge keels were fitted during a brief refit that began in October and effectively reduced the ship ' s roll by half . In June 1899 , " Dupuy de Lôme " visited ports in Spain and Portugal and she represented France at Spithead during Queen Victoria ' s funeral in January – February 1901 . The ship began an extensive reconstruction in 1902 at Brest , with the installation of 20 new Guyot – du - Temple water - tube boilers , that took four years to complete . The boilers had an operating pressure of and they required that a third funnel be added which necessitated extensive structural modifications . The rear military mast was replaced by a simple pole mast and sea trials in July 1906 showed that the ship could only attain from . " Dupuy de Lôme " was placed in reserve after completing her refit in October 1906 and was not recommissioned until September 1908 for service on the Moroccan station . By this time many of the ship ' s plates were rusting and her entire water distribution system had to be dismantled for cleaning in 1909 . Later that year , she was placed into reserve again and deemed uneconomical to repair . " Dupuy de Lôme " was decommissioned on 20 March 1910 , but the final decision to strike her from the Navy List was not made until 20 February 1911 . Prompted by the rumoured purchase of the small Italian protected cruiser by Ecuador in 1910 , Peru offered to buy a French armoured cruiser . A price of three million francs was agreed upon , to be paid in three instalments , and Peru agreed to reimburse France for the costs of repairing " Dupuy de Lôme " . These repairs were completed by 6 March 1912 and the ship was formally transferred to the Peruvian Navy and renamed " Commandante Aguirre " after the first instalment was paid . After " Umbria " was bought by Haiti instead of Ecuador , the Peruvians lost interest in completing the purchase and the ship was left in the care of the French in October 1914 . Proposals to use her during World War I were rejected as she was thought to be too obsolete to be worth refitting . On 17 January 1917 the ship was officially returned to France and the money already paid was put against the cost to repair " Commandante Aguirre " . Any money in excess of the estimated 400 , 000 francs that her scrapping would bring would be turned over to Peru . In October 1918 , she was sold to the Belgian firm of Lloyd Royal Belge ( LRB ) and converted to a freighter under the name " Péruvier " by Forges et Chantiers de la Gironde . A conventional bow was built up over her pseudo - ram and the space was used to accommodate her crew . The two outboard engines , their associated boilers and propeller shafts were removed as were the two forward funnels . The ship ' s side and deck armour was removed wherever it did not compromise structural strength . " Péruvier " was delivered in December 1919 and she began her first voyage carrying of coal from Cardiff to Rio de Janeiro on 20 January 1920 . Engine repairs had to be made at Falmouth the next day and were not completed until 14 February . Her engine broke down again in the mid - Atlantic and she was towed to Las Palmas by a Spanish merchantman . Arriving there on 20 March , she was towed by another LRB ship to Pernambuco . After her arrival there on 1 June , the coal in her No . 3 hold was found to be on fire . This was not extinguished until 19 June and the ship remained in harbour until 14 October . " Péruvier " was towed to Antwerp , arriving on 18 November , and lay idle there until she was sold for scrap . On 4 March 1923 , she was towed to the shipbreakers in Flushing .