French cruiser D'Estaing

D'Estaing was an unprotected cruiser of the Lapérouse class built for the French Navy in the 1870s. The ship was intended to serve abroad in the French colonial empire, and was ordered to strengthen the fleet after the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. To allow the ship to cruise for long distances, she was fitted with a full ship rig to supplement her steam engine, and she carried a main battery of fifteen 138.6 mm (5.46 in) guns. Her top speed under steam was 15 knots (28 km/h; 17 mph).

The ship was sent to East Asia in 1883 to join the Far East Squadron under Amédée Courbet. As France sought to expand the empire with the Tonkin campaign in northern Vietnam, war with Qing China became increasingly likely, and after skirmishes with Chinese forces escalated, Courbet took many of his ships, including D'Estaing, to attack the Chinese Fujian Fleet in the Battle of Fuzhou in August 1884. D'Estaing next saw action at the Battle of Tamsui, supporting an amphibious assault on Formosa that was defeated by the Chinese defenders. She participated in the subsequent blockade of Formosa and the Pescadores campaign. After the war ended in 1885, D'Estaing was recalled to France, and in the early 1890s, she was overhauled. She cruised in the Caribbean Sea later in the decade and was present in Cuba during the Spanish-American War in 1898. Later that year, she replaced her sister ship Lapérouse after the latter was wrecked in Madagascar. D'Estaing returned to France in 1900, where she was struck from the naval register, to be sold for scrap the following year.