 Friant
| |
| History | |
|---|---|
 France | |
| Name | Friant |
| Builder | Arsenal de Brest |
| Laid down | 8 December 1891 |
| Launched | 17 April 1893 |
| Commissioned | 25 June 1894 |
| In service | 15 May 1895 |
| Decommissioned | 29 July 1917 |
| Stricken | 21 June 1920 |
| Fate | Broken up, 1920 |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type | Friant-class protected cruiser |
| Displacement | 3,771 t (3,711 long tons; 4,157 short tons) |
| Length | 97.5 m (319 ft 11 in) loa |
| Beam | 13.24 m (43 ft 5 in) |
| Draft | 5.84 m (19 ft 2 in) |
| Installed power |
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| Propulsion | |
| Speed | 18.5 knots (34.3 km/h; 21.3 mph) |
| Range | 6,000 nmi (11,000 km; 6,900 mi) at 10 kn (19 km/h; 12 mph) |
| Complement | 331 |
| Armament |
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| Armor |
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Friant was a protected cruiser of the French Navy built in the 1890s, and the lead ship of the Friant class. Friant and her two sister ships were ordered as part of a major construction program directed against France's Italian and German opponents in the Triple Alliance, and they were intended to serve with the main fleet, and overseas in the French colonial empire. They were armed with a main battery of six 164 mm (6.5 in) guns and had a top speed of 18.7 knots (34.6 km/h; 21.5 mph).
Friant spent her first years in service assigned to the Northern Squadron, based in the English Channel. There, she was primarily occupied with training exercises. She was deployed to East Asia by early 1901 in response to the Boxer Uprising, and she remained in the region after the conflict ended. After returning to France, she received new boilers and thereafter returned to fleet operations.
At the start of World War I in August 1914, Friant had been on station in France's colonies in the Americas. She was initially assigned to a cruiser squadron to patrol the western end of the English Channel. In September, she was moved to French Morocco to join a group of cruisers patrolling for German commerce raiders. The ship was later moved to the Gulf of Guinea to patrol Germany's former colonies in western Africa. She ended the war having been converted into a repair ship based in Morocco and later at Mudros to support a flotilla of submarines. She was struck from the naval register in 1920 and sold to ship breakers.