 Friant in port, date unknown
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| Class overview | |
|---|---|
| Name | Friant class |
| Builders | |
| Operators |  French Navy |
| Preceded by | Alger |
| Succeeded by | Linois class |
| Built | 1891–1896 |
| In commission | 1895–1920 |
| Completed | 3 |
| Retired | 3 |
| General characteristics | |
| Type | 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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The Friant class comprised three protected cruisers of the French Navy built in the early 1890s; the three ships were Friant, Bugeaud, and Chasseloup-Laubat. They were ordered as part of a naval construction program directed at France's rivals, Italy and Germany, particularly after Italy made progress in modernizing its own fleet. The plan was also intended to remedy a deficiency in cruisers that had been revealed during training exercises in the 1880s. As such, the Friant-class cruisers were intended to operate as fleet scouts and in the French colonial empire. The ships were armed with a main battery of six 164 mm (6.5 in) guns supported by four 100 mm (3.9 in) guns and they had a top speed of 18.7 knots (34.6 km/h; 21.5 mph).
Friant and Chasseloup-Laubaut initially served with the Northern Squadron, while Bugeaud operated in the cruiser force of the Mediterranean Squadron, France's main battle fleet. Bugeaud became the flagship of the Levant Division in 1898, which operated as part of the International Squadron that intervened in the Cretan Revolt of 1897–1898. All three members of the class were sent to East Asia in response to the Boxer Uprising in Qing China by 1901, and they remained in the region through the mid-1900s. Bugeaud was badly worn out by her time in the Far East, and she was sold for scrap in 1907. That year, Chasseloup-Laubat visited the United States during the Jamestown Exposition.
Chasseloup-Laubat was reduced to a storage hulk in 1911, but Friant remained in active service through the start of World War I in August 1914. She operated with cruiser squadrons patrolling for German commerce raiders early in the war and was later sent to patrol the formerly-German colony of Kamerun. Chasseloup-Laubat was converted into a distilling ship to support the main French fleet at Corfu while Friant ended the war having been rebuilt into a repair ship. The latter vessel was sold for scrap in 1920, while Chasseloup-Laubat ultimately foundered in 1926 after having been abandoned in the bay of Nouadhibou, French Mauritania.