She returned to active service in 1943, spending her time based at Dakar on blockade patrol.

Post war she aided in the return of French colonial rule to Indochina until placed in reserve in 1947.

Serving under Charles Henri Hector d'Estaing's fleet off North America and the West Indies from 1778 to 1779, his most significant engagements were against the Royal Navy in the Indian Ocean between 1782 and 1783.

[8] She and Duquesne returned to Brest to participate in the 1930-31 training cruise in place of the lost armoured cruiser Edgar Quinet.

The First Light Division left Brest on 6 October 1930 visiting Dakar, Rio de Janeiro, the French West Indies and Casablanca before entering Toulon on 10 January 1931.

[9] On 26 June 1939 she was assigned as Flag Ship of the Indochina station and departed to replace the cruiser Primauguet arriving on 23 July 1939 at Saigon.

[10] With the outbreak of war in September, Suffren patrolled the South China seas on the lookout for German merchantmen.

[11][12] She sailed in concert with cruiser Tourville and fleet torpedo boat Forbin arriving in Beirut on 21 May, joined by Duquesne and Duguay-Trouin six days later.

On 11 June the ships conducted a raid into the Aegean Sea off Crete, finding nothing returned to Alexandria on 13 May.

[13] On 21 June she sailed with Duguay-Trouin in response to a report of three Italian cruisers moored at Tobruk.

On 22 July Suffren rescued two survivors of the British merchantman City of Canton, which was torpedoed five days earlier by German submarine U-178 off Beira, Mozambique.

Then proceeding to Colombo, Ceylon where she disembarked a light intervention unit before returning to Toulon arriving on 26 August.

She spent her time between Saigon and Ha Long Bay with visits to Shanghai, Hong Kong and Chinwangtao to repatriate troops left in China.

[19] She was wrongly alleged to have participated in the shelling of the Vietnamese port of Haiphong on 23 November 1946, an event that caused over six thousand casualties and contributed to the start of the First Indochina War; three avisos were the actual perpetrators.

On 1 January 1963 she was renamed Océan to release her name for a guided missile frigate under construction at Lorient.