French battleship France

The French battleship "France" was a "Courbet" classdreadnought battleship of the French Navy. The Courbet class were designed by M. Lyasse. "France" was built as part of the 1910 naval building programme.

"France" was the only one of the Courbet class to be built by the A.C. de la Loire company in St Nazaire. She was commissioned ceremoniously as part of the Bastille Day celebrations in 1914. Almost immediately after being commissioned, she and her sister ship, "Paris", were sent to Saint Petersburg, Russia as part of French President Raymond Poincaré's official visit. Both ships were en route home through the Baltic Sea when the First World War broke out in August 1914. At the time, "France" was not fully armed and had no ammunition aboard and she and "Paris" barely managed to escape the German High Seas Fleet.

"France", upon her return to France, was properly armed and ordered, along with her three sister ships, to serve in the Mediterranean Sea against the Austro-Hungarian and Turkish Navies.

After the war, in 1919 she took part in the Sevastopol operations against the Bolshevik revolutionaries.

On 26 August 1922, she was patrolling Quiberon Bay and struck an uncharted rock. As she was only patrolling she did not have her full crew onboard, so there were few casualties.