The Prairial is a light monitoring frigate ("frégate de surveillance") of the French Marine Nationale. She is the second ship of the Floréal class, and the second French warship named after the ninth month of the Republican Calendar.
She was built in the beginning of the 1990s by the Chantiers de l'Atlantique in Saint Nazaire. She is currently based in Tahiti. Although categorised as a surveillance ship, she armed with two anti-ship Exocet missiles and a 100 mm gun. She is also furbished with 35 extra berths for marines.
Prairial was deployed to East Timor as part of the Australian-led INTERFET peacekeeping taskforce from 16 October to 29 November 1999.
Famous quotes containing the words french and/or frigate:
“Saigon was an addicted city, and we were the drug: the corruption of children, the mutilation of young men, the prostitution of women, the humiliation of the old, the division of the family, the division of the country—it had all been done in our name.... The French city ... had represented the opium stage of the addiction. With the Americans had begun the heroin phase.”
—James Fenton (b. 1949)
“Our frigate takes fire,
The other asks if we demand quarter?
If our colors are struck and the fighting done?
Now I laugh content for I hear the voice of my little captain,
We have not struck, he composedly cries, we have just begun our part of the fighting.”
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