protective deck. The ship's conning tower was protected by and her turrets by 100 mm of armour. Service Dupuy de Lôme was laid down at the Brest shipyard on 4 July 1888 and she was launched on 27 October 1890. A number of her forged steel armour plates proved to be defective during tests as the metallurgical techniques to harden it were still under development, but most plates were accepted anyway. The ship was commissioned for preliminary sea trials on 1 April 1892 and one boiler tube burst on 20 June, burning 16 men. The necessary modifications to fix the problem delayed the ship's completion by almost a year. Further testing in October 1893, showed that Dupuy de Lômes engines could only attain during a 24-hour trial and that the boilers were structurally unsound. The manufacturer agreed to replace them, but the necessary work delayed the ship's completion by another year. She was commissioned again for a new set of sea trials on 15 November 1894 and proved reasonably satisfactory. Dupuy de Lôme was finally commissioned on 15 May 1895 and was assigned to the Northern Squadron, based on the Atlantic coast. She represented France, together with the ironclad and the cruiser , during the opening ceremony for the Kiel Canal the following month. She made port visits in Spain in June 1896 and escorted the Russian Imperial yacht into Cherbourg when Nicholas II of Russia began a state visit on 5 October. The ship escorted the President of France, Félix Faure, when he visited Russia in April 1897. Bilge keels were fitted during a brief refit that began in October and effectively reduced the ship's roll by half. In June 1899, Dupuy de Lôme visited ports in Spain and Portugal and she represented France at Spithead during Queen Victoria's funeral in January–February 1901. The ship began an extensive reconstruction in 1902 at Brest, with the installation of 20 new Guyot–du-Temple water-tube boilers, that took four years to complete. The boilers had an operating pressure of and they required that a third funnel be added which necessitated extensive structural modifications. The rear military mast was replaced by a simple pole mast and sea trials in July 1906 showed that the ship could only attain from . Dupuy de Lôme was placed in reserve after completing her refit in October 1906 and was not recommissioned until September 1908 for service on