During her sea trials on 5 October 1932, Maillé Brézé's turbines provided 69,362 PS (51,016 kW; 68,413 shp) and she reached 40.3 knots (74.6 km/h; 46.4 mph) for a single hour.

The ships carried enough fuel oil to give them a range of 3,000 nautical miles (5,600 km; 3,500 mi) at 14 knots (26 km/h; 16 mph).

They were also fitted with a pair of depth-charge throwers, one on each broadside abreast the aft funnels, for which they carried a dozen 100-kilogram (220 lb) depth charges.

She was laid down at their Saint-Nazaire shipyard on 9 October 1930, launched on 9 November 1931, commissioned on 31 December 1932 and entered service on 6 April 1933.

After 24 September most of the contre-torpilleurs and destroyers in the Mediterranean were assigned these tasks on a monthly rotation as part of the non-intervention policy.

On 18 January 1937 the ship was unsuccessfully attacked by a Spanish Republican Air Force bomber off the coast of Catalonia.

On 22 December Maillé Brézé, Kersaint and the large destroyers Albatros, Vauban and Bison rendezvoused with Force Z, the battleship Lorraine and the light cruisers Jean de Vienne and Marseillaise, which was escorting four cargo ships loaded with American aircraft to Casablanca, French Morocco.

Together with the large destroyers Vautour and Albatros, Maillé Brézé rendezvoused with the heavy cruisers Foch and Dupleix on 13 February 1940 as they escorted three more freighters loaded with American aircraft to Casablanca.

The German invasion on 9 April preempted the Allies and Tartu did not begin her escort duties until mid-April when she covered Convoy FP-1 transporting the 5th Demi-Brigade of Mountain Infantry (5e Demi-Brigade de Chasseurs alpins) to participate in the Namsos Campaign on 19 April; the German submarine U-46 unsuccessfully attacked Maillé Brézé with one torpedo and was unsuccessfully depth charged by her.

By that time, Maillé Brézé was so low in the water that she began sinking before she could be towed, and she went down with those still trapped in the forward part.

[11][12][13] Greenockian May Watson recalled in an interview sixty years after the event that she clearly remembered being in an art class at school at the time, and "we just heard this tremendous bang and we all wondered what it was.

A lot of the ladies in the town went along to the halls and helped to bathe their wounds until they could be taken to hospital — the old Greenock Royal Infirmary in Duncan Street.

[14] This remains a common belief in the Inverclyde area, but is incorrect as the sinking occurred a few months before the Free French Naval Forces came into being, and there is no mention of the ship or its sailors on the monument.