![]() Voltaire in Toulon harbour
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History | |
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Name | Voltaire |
Namesake | Voltaire |
Builder | FC de la Méditerranée, La Seyne-sur-Mer |
Laid down | 20 July 1907 |
Launched | 16 January 1909 |
Completed | 1 August 1911 |
Reclassified | As training ship, 1927 |
Stricken | 1935 |
Fate | Sold for scrap, December 1949 |
General characteristics | |
Class and type | Danton-class semi-dreadnought battleship |
Displacement | 18,754 t (18,458 long tons) (normal) |
Length | 146.6 m (481 ft) (o/a) |
Beam | 25.8 m (84 ft 8 in) |
Draft | 8.44 m (27 ft 8 in) |
Installed power |
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Propulsion | 4 shafts; 4 steam turbines |
Speed | 19.25 knots (35.7 km/h; 22.2 mph) |
Complement | 25 officers and 831 enlisted men |
Armament |
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Armor |
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Voltaire was one of the six Danton-class semi-dreadnought battleships built for the French Navy in the first decade of the 20th century. Shortly after World War I began, the ship participated in the Battle of Antivari in the Adriatic Sea and helped to sink an Austro-Hungarian protected cruiser. She spent most of the rest of the war blockading the Straits of Otranto and the Dardanelles to prevent German, Austro-Hungarian and Turkish warships from breaking out into the Mediterranean. Voltaire was hit by two torpedoes fired by a German submarine in October 1918, but was not seriously damaged. After the war, she was modernized in 1923–1925 and subsequently became a training ship. She was condemned in 1935 and later sold for scrap.