French ironclad Requin

Requin in Britain in 1892
History
France
Name	Requin
Laid down	15 November 1878
Launched	13 June 1885
Commissioned	1 December 1888
Decommissioned	1 August 1919
Stricken	21 June 1920
Fate	Broken up, 1921
General characteristics
Class and type	Terrible-class ironclad
Displacement	7,767.2 t (7,644.5 long tons; 8,561.9 short tons)
Length	88.25 m (289 ft 6 in) loa
Beam	17.78 m (58 ft 4 in)
Draft	7.74 m (25 ft 5 in)
Installed power	10 × fire-tube boilers 6,000 ihp (4,500 kW)
Propulsion	2 × compound steam engines 2 × screw propellers
Speed	14.5 to 15 kn (26.9 to 27.8 km/h; 16.7 to 17.3 mph)
Range	1,678 nmi (3,108 km; 1,931 mi) at 11 knots (20 km/h; 13 mph)
Complement	373
Armament	2 × 420 mm (17 in) guns 4 × 100 mm (3.9 in) guns 2 × 65 mm (2.6 in) guns 2 × 47 mm (1.9 in) Hotchkiss guns 1 × 47 mm Hotchkiss revolver cannon 10 × 37 mm (1.5 in) Hotchkiss revolver cannon 4 × 356 mm (14 in) torpedo tubes
Armor	Belt: 300 to 500 mm (11.8 to 19.7 in) Deck: 80 mm (3.1 in) Barbettes: 450 mm (17.7 in) Conning tower: 25 mm (0.98 in)
General characteristics (as modernized)
Installed power	12 × Niclausse boilers 6,130 ihp (4,570 kW)
Complement	332
Armament	2 × 274 mm (10.8 in) guns 6 × 100 mm QF guns 10 × 47 mm guns 3 × 37 mm guns

Requin was an ironclad barbette ship built for the French Navy in the late 1870s and early 1880s. She was last member of the four-ship Terrible class. They were built as part of a fleet plan started in 1872, which by the late 1870s had been directed against a strengthening Italian fleet. The ships were intended for coastal operations, and as such had a shallow draft and a low freeboard, which greatly hampered their seakeeping and thus reduced their ability to be usefully employed outside of coastal operations after entering service. Armament consisted of a pair of 420 mm (16.5 in) guns in individual barbettes, the largest-caliber gun ever mounted on a French capital ship. Requin was laid down in 1878 and was completed in 1887.

Unlike her sister ships that served in the Mediterranean Fleet, Requin spent her early career in the Northern Squadron in the English Channel. In 1891, the unit was sent to visit Britain and Russia. She was withdrawn from service in 1896 to be modernized with new armament, propulsion system, and armor. Work was completed in 1901 and the next year she returned to service as a guard ship based in Cherbourg. She was the only member of the class to see action during World War I, during which she was stationed in the Suez Canal to defend the waterway against attacks from the Ottoman Empire. She helped to repel a major attack in February 1915, and supported Allied operations along the coast of Ottoman Palestine in 1917. She was briefly used as a training ship after the war, before being broken up in 1921.