French battleship La Gloire
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 La Gloire, first ocean-going ironclad warship in history.
| |
| Warship | |
|---|---|
| Shipyard: | Toulon, France |
| Laid down: | April 1858 |
| Launched: | 24 November 1859 |
| Commissioned: | August 1860 |
| Decommissioned: | 1879 |
| Fate: | Scrapped in 1883 |
| General Characteristics | |
| Displacement: | 5,630 tonnes |
| Dimensions: | 256 ft × 56 ft × 28 ft (77.8 m × 17 m x 8.4 m) |
| Armament: | 36 × 6.4 in (163 mm) rifled muzzle-loaders model (1858/60) |
| Armament (after 1866): | 8 × 9.4in (239 mm) and BL model 1864, 6 × 7.6in (193 mm) BL model 1866 |
| Armour: | 4 1/3 to 4 2/3 inches (110 to 119 mm) iron plates |
| Propulsion: | Sail and single shaft HRCR (horizontal return), 2,500 hp (1.9MW) steam engine = 13 kts |
| Boilers: | 8 oval boilers |
| Coal capacity: | 665 tons |
| Complement: | 570 |
The French Navy's La Gloire ("Glory") was the first ocean-going ironclad battleship in history.
She was launched in 1859 following the Crimean War, in response to new developments in naval gun technology, especially the Paixhans guns and rifled guns, which used explosive shells with destructive power against wooden boats. She also followed the development of the ironclad floating batteries built by the British and French for the Bombardment of Russian forts during the Crimean War. She was designed by the French naval architect Dupuy de Lôme.
A 5,630-ton broadside battleship cut down by one deck in order to save weight, she used massive iron plates sheathed over a wooden hull structure. She was built at Toulon, France.
La Gloire initiated the obsolescence of traditional non-armoured wooden ships-of-the-line, and all major navies had no choice but to build ironclads of their own. The word had it that the Gloire fighting against conventional ships of the time would be comparable to "a wolf breaking havoc amongst sheep".
However La Gloire was soon herself rendered obsolete by the launching in 1860 of the British HMS Warrior, the world's first iron hulled warship.
La Gloire had two sister ships: Invincible and Normandie, both commissioned in 1862.
Reference
"Steam, Steel and Shellfire. The steam warship 1815-1905" Conway's History of the ship ISBN 0785814132
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