French ship Valmy
Encyclopedia : F : FR : FRE : French ship Valmy
| |
| Career |
|
|---|---|
| Built | Brest, plans by Leroux, 1836-1847 |
| Fate | Scrapped, 1891 |
| General Characteristics | |
| Displacement: | 5,570 long tons (5,826 metric tons) |
| Length: | 64.05 m |
| Width: | 18.11 m |
| Beam: | 8.61 m |
| Draught: | |
| Class: | 1st rate |
| Speed: | |
| Complement: | 1100 |
| Armament: | 120 guns, including:
|
The Valmy, named after the Battle of Valmy, was the largest and last of the three-deckers of the French Navy ever constructed. Her construction was started in Brest in 1838 as Formidable, and she was launched 9 years afterward. When she entered service in 1849, she was the largest warship in the world and would remain so until 1853, when the British three-decker Duke Of Wellington (6,071 tons and converted to steam power while on the stocks) entered service. She would remain the largest sailing three- decker ever built. She had right sides, which increased significantly the space available for upper batteries, but pejorated the stability of the ship; wooden stabilisators were added under the waterline to address the issue.
The Valmy was thought to be the largest sort of sailing ship possible, as larger dimensions made the maneuver of riggings impracticable with mere manpower.
She was engaged in the Crimean War, where she proved difficult to manoeuver and, like other sailing vessels, often had to be towed by steam ships. During the bombardement of Sebastopol, the only time she fired her guns in anger, she was towed by the new steam two-decker Le Napoleon.
She returned in Brest in 1855, where she was disarmed. She was used as a school ship for the French Naval Academy from 1864 under the new name Borda. She took back her old name of Intrépide one year before being stricken from the navy list in 1891. She was scrapped soon afterwards.
The name was later re-used for a Guépard-class destroyer, launched in 1927 and scuttled in 1942.
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