Spahi-class destroyer

The Spahi class consisted of seven destroyers built for the French Navy in the first decade of the 20th century. One ship was lost during the First World War, but the others survived to be scrapped afterwards.

Design and description
The Spahi-class was over 50 percent larger than the preceding Branlebas-class destroyer to match the increase in size of foreign destroyers. They varied slightly in size due to building practices of each shipyard. They had an length between perpendiculars of 64 - 65.8 m, a beam of 6.05 - 6.6 m, and a draft of 2.3 - 2.4 m. The ships displaced 530 - 550 t at deep load.

The destroyers were powered by two triple-expansion steam engines, each driving one propeller shaft using steam provided by four water-tube boilers of three different types. FRENCH DESTROYER Spahi and FRENCH DESTROYER Lansquenet used Normand boilers, FRENCH DESTROYER Hussard and FRENCH DESTROYER Mameluk had du Temple boilers while the remaining three ships were fitted with Guyot boilers. The engines were designed to produce 7500 ihp, except for Spahi with 9000 ihp, which was intended to give the sister ships a speed of 28 kn. During their sea trials, they reached speeds of 27.1 - 29.8 kn. The ships carried 95 t of coal which gave them a range of 1000 - 1200 nmi at a cruising speed of 10 kn. Lansquenet had a capacity of 115 t which gave her a range of 2880 nmi at the same cruising speed.

The primary armament of the Spahi-class ships consisted of six 65 mm Modèle 1902 guns in single mounts, one each fore and aft of the superstructure and the others were distributed amidships. They were also fitted with three 450 mm torpedo tubes. One of these was in a fixed mount in the bow and the other two were on single rotating mounts amidships.