Patrie was the second and final member of the République class of pre-dreadnought battleships of the French Navy built between her keel laying in April 1902 and her commissioning in July 1907.

[2] Patrie's main battery consisted of four Canon de 305 mm Modèle 1893/96 guns mounted in two twin-gun turrets, one forward and one aft.

The secondary battery consisted of eighteen Canon de 164 mm Modèle 1893 guns; twelve were mounted in twin turrets, and six were in casemates in the hull.

Also in 1915, the 47 mm guns located on either side of the bridge were removed and the two on the aft superstructure were moved to the roof of the rear turret.

Tests revealed the wider rangefinders were more susceptible to working themselves out of alignment, so the navy decided to retain the 2 m version for the other battleships of the fleet.

The dock was finally flooded when Ensign de Vaisseau Jean-Antoine Roux (who was killed shortly afterward by fragments from the ship) managed to open the sluice gates.

On 13 January 1908, Patrie and the battleships République, Charlemagne, Gaulois, Saint Louis, Masséna, and Jauréguiberry steamed to Golfe-Juan and then to Villefranche-sur-Mer, where they remained for more than a month.

After his departure, the Mediterranean Squadron conducted training exercises off Corsica, followed by a naval review in Villefranche for President Armand Fallières on 26 April.

The ships then steamed north to La Pallice, where they conducted tests with their wireless telegraphy sets and shooting training in Quiberon Bay.

[13] Patrie joined République, Justice, Vérité, Démocratie, and Suffren for a simulated attack on the port of Nice on 18 February.

[14] During the maneuvers, Patrie launched a torpedo that accidentally hit République, damaging her hull and forcing her to put into Toulon for repairs.

The fleet returned to Toulon on 29 April, where Fallières doubled the crews' rations and suspended any punishments to thank the men for their performance.

Patrie and the rest of 1st Squadron and the armored cruisers Ernest Renan and Léon Gambetta went on a cruise in the western Mediterranean in May and June, visiting a number of ports including Cagliari, Bizerte, Bône, Philippeville, Algiers, and Bougie.

Admiral Jauréguiberry took the fleet to sea on 11 September for maneuvers and visits to Golfe-Juan and Marseilles, returning to port five days later.

Boué de Lapeyrère inspected both battleship squadrons in Golfe-Juan from 2 to 12 July, after which the ships cruised first to Corsica and then to Algeria.

The 2nd Squadron departed Toulon on 23 August with the armored cruisers Jules Ferry and Edgar Quinet and two destroyer flotillas to conduct training exercises in the Atlantic.

While en route to Brest, the ships stopped in Tangier, Royan, Le Verdon, La Pallice, Quiberon Bay, and Cherbourg.

The 2nd Squadron ships conducted torpedo training on 19 January 1914, and later that month they steamed to Bizerte, returning to Toulon on 6 February.

Accordingly, Patrie and the rest of the 2nd Squadron were sent to Algiers, where they joined a group of seven passenger ships that had a contingent of 7,000 troops from XIX Corps aboard.

In the ensuing Battle of Antivari, Boué de Lapeyrère initially ordered his battleships to fire warning shots, but this caused confusion among the fleet's gunners that allowed Ulan to escape.

[22] The French fleet patrolled the southern end of the Adriatic for the next three days with the expectation that the Austro-Hungarians would counterattack, but their opponent never arrived.

The French battleships then bombarded Austrian fortifications at Cattaro on 1 September in an attempt to draw out the Austro-Hungarian fleet, which again refused to take the bait.

[23][24][25] The patrols continued through December, when an Austro-Hungarian U-boat torpedoed Jean Bart, leading to the decision by the French naval command to withdraw the main battle fleet from direct operations in the Adriatic.

On 18 May, VA Nicol came aboard Patrie, making her his flagship; she then left 2nd Squadron for service with the Dardanelles Division as part of the Gallipoli Campaign.

She steamed to the eastern Mediterranean with the armored cruiser Kléber and joined what became the 3rd Battle Division, which also included the battleships Suffren, Saint Louis, Charlemagne, Jauréguiberry, and Henri IV.

On 12 July, Patrie supported an assault on the Ottoman forts at Achi Baba, firing several salvos with her secondary battery before returning to Mudros for the night.

On 20 January 1918, the French received word that the battlecruiser Goeben (now under the Ottoman flag as Yavuz Sultan Selim) would sortie, so Patrie and République prepared for action.

She then returned to Mudros, by which time an influenza outbreak had killed eleven men and made another 475 seriously ill, 150 of whom had to be sent home to recover.

The ship saw no further action for the remainder of the war, which concluded with the armistices signed with Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire in November.

Another accident occurred on 3 June when one of the training torpedoes malfunctioned and circled back, striking Patrie and punching a hole in the hull.