THE “RICHELIEU.

[79]

The French delayed the change for some years, as we see. M. De Bussy, the designer
of the Redoutable, and a most accomplished naval constructor, built a very large
part of the ship of steel, and by so doing brought the French dockyards into early
acquaintance with the superiority of that material to iron for constructive
purposes. The Redoutable has armor of more than 14 inches in thickness upon her
belt, and of 9½ inches upon her central battery. She carries eight 25-ton guns[26]—
four in her central battery, two in barbette half-towers, and two on revolving
platforms at the bow and stern respectively. She also carries eight light 5½-inch
guns. This ship generally resembles her successors, the Dévastation and the
Foudroyant (by the same designer), in so far as that her batteries fire past sides,
with great tumble home.

Lord Brassey (in this respect somewhat erroneously following Mr. King, of the
United States navy, in his able work upon “The War-ships and Navies of the World”),
says, “The faculty of firing parallel to the line of keel is secured in the French
ship by the tumble home of the ship’s sides, and not by the projection of the
battery beyond them, as in the English vessel (the Audacious).” It is difficult to
understand what this means, because it is obviously only by the projection of the
battery beyond the sides of the ship which are before and after it that fore and
aft fire can be obtained from the battery in either case. But it is not true that
the battery of the Audacious, any more than the battery of the Redoutable, projects
beyond the breadth of the ship at the water-line, which would seem to be what is
intended, and Lord Brassey may assure himself of the fact by looking at Plate III.
of his own work on “The British Navy,” from which the above words are quoted. The
Redoutable is a full-rigged ship, and nevertheless steams 14¼ knots per hour. There
is one particular in which the Dévastation and the Foudroyant, like her as they are
in general design, differ materially from the Redoutable. I refer to the armament.
The former two ships each carry four 34-centimetre 48-ton guns in the main-deck
battery, in lieu of the four 25-ton guns of the Redoutable.

The Amiral Duperré (designed by M. Sabattier, the able French chief constructor)
claims a few words, as she differs materially in type[80] from the three ships just
discussed. She has a complete belt of very thick armor from stem to stern—greatest
thickness 22 inches, tapering to 10 inches at the extremities, with a thick deck (2
inches) at the top of the belt in the usual manner. But above this belt there is no
armored main-deck battery, as in the other ships, the chief armament, of four 48-
ton guns, being carried in four elevated barbette towers, two of which are well
forward, and project considerably to enable their guns to act efficiently as bow-
chasers, and at the same time to command all round the broadside and right astern.
To facilitate this the sides of the ship have great tumble home. The other two
towers are situated at the middle line of the ship, one near the stern, and the
other farther forward, between the main and the mizzen masts. The main-deck,
although without armor defence, is not without armament, as it carries fourteen 5½-
inch 60-pounder rifled breech-loaders. Other particulars of the Amiral Duperré are
given in the table, and on page 81 is a view of her, engraved from a photograph
with which I have been favored by a French officer.

It will be observed from her description that the most characteristic feature of
this great ship of more than 10,000 tons is the absence of any guns protected by
armor. The barbette towers, it is true, are armored with 12-inch plates, and the
main-deck guns are under the protection of the thin plating of the ship’s side,
which latter is of little or no avail, however, against the armament of other
first-class ships. Practically the whole of the Duperré’s guns are unprotected. It
may be added that during the discussions in London upon the “ships armored in
places” an attempt was made to show that the Duperré, owing to her alleged small
initial stability, was as devoid of stability when injured above the belt as
certain vessels of the British Admiral class when injured before and abaft the belt
—a statement which I distrust, as I regard it as a mere inference from an
experiment which I believe to be delusive. At the same time, the Duperré would have
been the better for more initial stability.

[81]
[82]
War-ship in harbor
THE “AMIRAL DUPERRÉ:” FRENCH ARMORED SHIP OF THE FIRST CLASS.

But it is obvious that all belted or partially belted vessels, in which the belt is
carried but a small height above the water for the size of the ship, must run the
risk of losing both buoyancy and stability very soon if even moderately inclined in
or after battle, seeing that, with a moderate inclination only, the entire armor-
belt on the depressed side of the ship must disappear beneath the sea’s surface.
The strenuous assertion of this source of danger, although it could not lead to
much increase in the stability of the existing armored ships, has produced as one
effect the busy and earnest efforts which both English and French constructors have
been recently making to subdivide their ships above the armor[83] into as many
water-tight compartments as possible, and to stuff these compartments as full as
possible of buoyant (or at least of water-excluding) materials. The necessity for
resorting to this device, however, in first-class ships of nine, ten, or eleven
thousand tons displacement, and of something approaching to five million dollars
each in value, is not a thing for either French or English naval constructors to be
proud of. But the assertion of the danger in question has had in England the
further and very satisfactory result of bringing much more trustworthy ships, like
the Nile and Trafalgar, into being, and of insuring the determined support of these
ships in Parliament whenever those who foolishly confound mere cheapness with merit
in such constructions seek to interfere with the progress of these magnificent
vessels.

Two other powerful ships of the French navy, closely resembling the Amiral Duperré,
are the Amiral Baudin and the Formidable. They are of 3¼ feet more beam than the
Duperré (and therefore probably have much larger stability), and their displacement
exceeds hers by 900 tons. Their armaments chiefly differ from hers in the
employment of three guns of 75 tons each in their towers, in lieu of the four guns
of 48 tons of the Duperré. The Neptune, Hoche, Magenta, and Marceau are four other
powerful ships, as will have been seen from Table A, the principal armament of each
consisting of four guns of 52 tons, carried in towers, with the exception of the
Hoche, which has two of her four principal guns of 28 tons each only.

Incidental mention has already been made on page 76 of two ships, the Caïman and
Indomptable, which, although of only 7200 tons, carry very thick armor (19½
inches), and as a matter of fact carry also guns of the heaviest type (75-ton).
There are two other vessels of the same description, the Terrible and Requin.
Careful note should be taken of these four steel-built vessels, which add greatly
to the power of France. Each carries two of the very powerful guns just mentioned,
and steams at a speed of 14½ knots. In the same category of thickly armored ships
the French have yet one other ship, the Furieux, of 5560 tons. Her armor is 17½
inches thick in places, and she is armed with two 48-ton guns. Her speed is 12
knots. The Tonnant has the same armor and armament, but she is of nearly 1000 tons
less displacement, drawing much less water, and steaming only at 10 knots per hour.

We may sum up the facts relating to the larger class of French iron-clads which
still rank among the efficient ships of 7000 tons and upward by saying that, in
addition to the sixteen ships of which the particulars are given in Table A, there
are on the efficient list the Colbert, Friedland,[84] arengo, Océan, Richelieu,
Suffren, Trident, Savoie, Revanche, Surveillante, and Héroïne, most of which have
been previously described in general terms, and the remainder of which are of less
than 6000 tons, and were built chiefly of wood many years ago.

The French navy further comprises thirteen armor-plated cruisers, of which four
have lately been dropped out of some official lists. Of the remaining nine, four
are modern vessels, and all of about equal size and power. These are the
Duguesclin, Vauban, Bayard, and Turenne; but of these, while the first two are
built of steel, the last two are built of wood, with iron topsides, as are all the
remaining five vessels of this class. The subjoined table will indicate the
inferior character of most of the vessels of this type:

Table B.—FRENCH ARMORED CRUISERS.

Name of Ship. Displace-
ment. Indicated
Horse-power. Speed. Length. Breadth. Draught of Water.
Maximum
Thickness
of Armor. Heaviest Guns
carried.
Tons. Knots. Feet. Feet. Feet. Inches
Bayard 5900 4560 14.5 266 57.2 23 3 10 4 of 16 tons.
Duguesclin 5900 4000 14 266 57.2 23.3 10 4 ” 16 ”
Turenne 5900 4250 14.2 266 57.2 23.3 10 4 ” 16 ”
Vauban 5900 4000 14 266 57.2 23.3 10 4 ” 16 ”
La Galissonière 4700 2370 13 256 49 23 6 6 ”
16 ”
Triomphante 4700 2400 12.8 256 49 23 6 6 ” 16 ”
Victorieuse 4600 2210 12.7 256 49 23 6 6 ” 16 ”
Reine Blanche 3620 1860 11.8 230 46.2 21.8 6 6 ” 8 ”
Thetis 3620 1860 12 230 46.2 21.8 6 6 ” 8 ”

Of the above ships it may be remarked that the Thetis and Reine Blanche have been
nearly twenty years afloat, the Galissonière was launched in 1872, the Victorieuse
in 1875, and the Triomphante in 1877. The remainder of the nine, as previously
stated, are modern vessels, the Duguesclin being not yet completed. The Duguesclin
and her sister ships are of the Duperré type, much reduced in dimensions.

There are nine completed coast-guard iron-clads and eight armored gun-boats in the
French navy, as follows:

Table C.—FRENCH IRON-CLAD COAST-GUARD VESSELS.

Name of S