French Battleship Bouvet (1898)
Bouvet was arguably the most successful of the 1890s generation of French battleships. (For an enlarged view of the photo above, click here.) She presented a haughty entry and less futuristic masts than her semi-sisters Masséna and Jauréguiberry. Named for the French Admiral François Joseph Bouvet, she was built at the Arsenal de Lorient, laid down in 1893 and completed in 1898. Her tumble-home hull shape and lack of effective watertight subdivision were to prove fatal when she went to war, but in the 17 years before, she was considered a crack ship. Her lines were closely followed in developing the 3-ship Charlemagne class, completed 1899, but the Charlmagnes mounted twin turrets bow and stern on a slightly smaller (11,300-ton) displacement, beginning the move away from the classic "diamond pattern" armament layout.
Like other French ships of her generation, Bouvet had Belleville boilers, electrically operated turrets with all-round loading capability, and triple screw propulsion. Bouvet was the first French warship to employ Harvey armor, an improved process manufactured in the U.S. France was behind the rest of the world in armor technology; Britain had already switched from Harvey to the improved Krupp Cemented (KC) process by the time Bouvet joined the fleet. But the sprawling German arms conglomerate of Krupp AG held the patent to the KC manufacturing process. Due to the political and military rivalry between Germany and France, Krupps withheld permission to license manufacture of their state-of-the-art armor process from the French until well after the turn of the century, deliberately increasing the lag between the French navy and the Kaiser's own burgeoning fleet.
Specifications for the Bouvet: 387' x 69' x 27'3" (118m x 21m x 8.3m). Displacement: 12,007 tons. Armament: (2) 12"/30 cal (2x1), (2) 10.8"/45 cal (2x1), (8) 5.5", (8) 3.9", (12) 3-pdr, (4) 18" torpedo tubes. Harvey armor: 15.75" belt; 14" turret; 12" conning tower; 2.76" deck. Fuel capacity: 980 tons coal. Propulsion: 32 Belleville water-tube boilers; (3) vertical triple-expansion engines developing 14,400 HP, shafted to triple screw. Speed: 18 knots. Cruising radius: 3,590 nm. Crew: 666.
In the Great War Bouvet, like so many other pre-dreadnoughts, was assigned to the assault on Gallipoli. Reflecting Churchill's original vision of the campaign, the first action was an attempt to force the Straits by naval power alone. The first stage was to be heavy bombardment of the defending forts at the Narrows. The bombardment was to be performed by a mighty armada, led by the British superdreadnought Queen Elizabeth and battlecruiser Inflexible, the semi-dreadnought gunships Lord Nelson and Agamemnon, and otherwise consisting of eight British and four French pre-dreadnoughts. Before the Allies arrived in early 1915, the Turks and their German advisors had obstructed the Dardanelles leading up to the Narrows with booms, chains, and ten discrete minefields, mostly sown by the minelayer Nusret, built in Germany in 1910 and still extant at Tarsus.
The joint Franco-British fleet of 16 battleships sailed in to bombard the defenses on March 18, 1915 after only a perfunctory minesweeping operation. After loosing several broadsides, each ship in turn had to circle around behind the firing line and rotate up again. Bouvet took 8 hits from Turkish gunners during her first at-bat; her forward 12" turret was knocked out. As she went about to starboard, performing the turn-around maneuver, she struck a mine amidships which blew up a magazine (probably the starboard 10.8"). Promptly and inexorably, Bouvet rolled over and sank. In only 2 minutes she was gone, taking 660 of her crew with her. The British battleships Ocean and Irresistible were also sunk by mines that day (although they managed to stay afloat for some hours and avert the catastrophic loss of life which marked Bouvet's demise). The French battleships Suffren and Gaulois were badly damaged by mines as well. Inflexible too was damaged after hitting 2 mines, and was lucky to reach Malta in time for repairs. All round, 18 March had been a bloody rotten show for the Allies.
Bouvet had always been a crack ship, one of the handsomest in the French fleet, and her sudden loss caused dismay in France; though amid the torrent of terrible news and slaughter in that first year of WWI it tended to get lost; it did not become a defining moment in the way the sinking of the Hood would for Britons in 1941. But the disastrous losses of March 18 (among which the shocking sudden end of Bouvet stood out as the worst case) convinced the British Admiral de Robeck to switch tactics. De Robeck and, in turn, the Allied high command came to back a land invasion of Gallipoli supported by naval gunfire. Churchill (who had sparked the Gallipoli campaign) quickly assented, perceiving how the ballooning size of the operation could inflate his powers, and his prestige if victory followed. The rest, as they say, is history.
Ever wonder what the 1890s French fleet looked like on maneuvers? Well, wonder no more, but feast your eyes. At right is Bouvet, her patented stepped-down bow slicing through the Mediterranean billows, while the Jauréguiberry wallows along beside her.
Quarter view across the bow of a large armored cruiser. Judging by the fluttering signal flags, the volume of smoke issuing from the funnels, and the crewmen standing by at stations, this squadron is preparing to weigh anchor for exercises. Click here for marvelous enlarged view.
Here is Bouvet, wearing her largest ensign, at anchor in the roadstead at Bizerta, attended by native feluccas.
