French battleship Justice

Justice

Justice in the United States in 1909
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	24 × Niclausse boilers 17,500 CV (17,300 ihp)
Propulsion	3 × screw propellers 3 × triple-expansion steam engines
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	32 officers 710 enlisted men
Armament	4 × 305 mm (12 in) guns 10 × 194 mm (7.6 in) guns 13 × 65 mm (2.6 in) guns 10 × 47 mm (1.9 in) guns 2 × 450 mm (17.7 in) torpedo tubes
Armor	Belt: 280 mm (11 in) Turrets: 360 mm (14.2 in) Conning tower: 266 mm (10.5 in) Upper deck: 54 mm (2.1 in) Lower deck: 51 mm (2 in)

Justice was a pre-dreadnought battleship built for the French Navy in the early 1900s. She was the second member of the Liberté class, which included three other vessels and was a derivative of the preceding République class, with 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, the first in December 1913 and the second in 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 a mutiny aboard Justice and two other battleships, though it was quickly suppressed. 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.