 Justice in the United States in 1909
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| History | |
|---|---|
 France | |
| Name | Justice |
| Namesake | Justice |
| Laid down | 1 April 1903 |
| Launched | 27 October 1904 |
| Commissioned | 15 April 1908 |
| Decommissioned | 1 March 1921 |
| Fate | Scrapped in 1922 |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type | Liberté-class pre-dreadnought battleship |
| Displacement | Full load: 14,900 t (14,700 long tons) |
| Length | 135.25 meters (443 ft 9 in) loa |
| Beam | 24.25 m (79 ft 7 in) |
| Draft | 8.2 m (26 ft 11 in) |
| Installed power |
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| Propulsion | |
| Speed | 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph) |
| Range | 8,400 nmi (15,600 km; 9,700 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph) |
| Complement |
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| Armament |
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| Armor |
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Justice was a pre-dreadnought battleship built for the French Navy, commissioned in 1908. She was the second member of the Liberté class, which included three other vessels, and was a derivative of the preceding République class, the primary difference being the inclusion of a heavier secondary battery. Justice carried a main battery of four 305 mm (12 in) guns, like the République, but mounted ten 194 mm (7.6 in) guns for her secondary armament in place of the 164 mm (6.5 in) guns of the earlier vessels. Like many late pre-dreadnought designs, Justice was completed after the revolutionary British battleship HMS Dreadnought had entered service, rendering her obsolescent.
On entering service, Justice became the flagship of the 2nd Division of the Mediterranean Squadron, based in Toulon. She immediately began the normal peacetime training routine of squadron and fleet maneuvers and cruises to various ports in the Mediterranean. She also participated in several naval reviews for a number of French and foreign dignitaries. In September 1909, the ships of the 2nd Division crossed the Atlantic to the United States to represent France at the Hudson–Fulton Celebration. She collided with her sister ship Démocratie twice, in December 1913 and August 1914, though she was not badly damaged in either accident.
Following the outbreak of war in July 1914, Justice was used to escort troopship convoys carrying elements of the French Army from French North Africa to face the Germans invading northern France. She thereafter steamed to contain the Austro-Hungarian Navy in the Adriatic Sea, taking part in the minor Battle of Antivari in August. The increasing threat of Austro-Hungarian U-boats and the unwillingness of the Austro-Hungarian fleet to engage in battle led to a period of monotonous patrols that ended with Italy's entry into the war on the side of France, which allowed the French fleet to be withdrawn. In mid-1916, she became involved in events in Greece, being stationed in Salonika to put pressure on the Greek government to enter the war on the side of the Allies, but she saw little action for the final two years of the war.
Immediately after the end of the war, she was sent to the Black Sea, first to oversee the surrender of German-occupied Russian warships there, and then to join the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War, helping to defend Odessa and Sevastopol from the Bolsheviks. By April 1919, war-weary crews demanded to return to France, leading to quickly suppressed mutinies on Justice and two other battleships. Justice was used to tow the crippled battleship Mirabeau back to France, thereafter becoming a training ship. She served in this capacity only briefly, however, and was placed in reserve in April 1920, decommissioned in March 1921, and sold for scrap in December.