Warship Wednesday, December 19
Here at LSOZI, we are going to take out every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week.
– Christopher Eger
Warship Wednesday, December 19
Here we see the beautiful pre-drednought Charlemagne of the French navy undated photo around 1900.
Built before the lessons learned in the Spanish-American war, but utilizing some learned from the clash of Japanese and Imperial Chinese armored vessels in 1894, she was commissioned in September 1897. She is typical of her era with Harvey armor, a varied and confusing series of main, secondary, tertiary, quaternary, and quinary batteries of armament– all of which had limited elevation and arcs of fire. Built with twenty coal-fired boilers to power a trio of 4-cylinder vertical triple expansion steam engines on independent shafts, the 386-foot long battleship broke a blistering 18-knots on her trials.
By 1906, at the ripe old age of 8, she was thoroughly obsolete. Her place in the battle line was taken by fast oil-fired warships with Krupp armor and an all-big gun battery. However this did not mean she was retired. On the contrary the French kept her in service for another decade of service in both peace and war. Considered almost expendable by 1915, she and five other French battleships were tasked with close in bombardment of the Turkish defenses of the Dardanelles during the Gallipoli campaign.
She served it up hot to the Turks and took some punishment in return. She was patched back together but by 1917 Charlemagne was laid up.
She was scrapped in 1923.
Specs:
Displacement: 11,275 t (11,097 long tons) (deep load)
Length: 117.7 m (386 ft 2 in)
Beam: 20.3 m (66 ft 7 in)
Draught: 8.4 m (27 ft 7 in)
Installed power: 14,500 PS (10,700 kW)
20 Belleville water-tube boilers
Propulsion: 3 shafts, 3 four-cylinder vertical triple-expansion steam engines
Speed: 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph)
Range: 4,200 miles (3,650 nmi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph)
Complement: 727
Armament: 2 × 2 – 305 mm (12 in) Mle 1893 guns
10 × 1 – 138.6 mm (5.46 in) Mle 1893 guns
8 × 1 – 100 mm (3.9 in) Mle 1893 guns
20 × 1 – 47 mm Mle 1885 Hotchkiss guns
4 × 450 mm (17.7 in) torpedo tubes
Armour: Belt: 110–320 mm (4.3–12.6 in)
Decks: 55–90 mm (2.2–3.5 in)
Barbettes: 270 mm (10.6 in)
Turrets: 320 mm (12.6 in)
Conning tower: 326 mm (12.8 in)
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