Later French Armored Cruisers, 1902 - 1911

The Jeanne d'Arc in a smart colorized postcard flaunts her six buff-colored funnels and crisply creased deck awnings. The two groups of three funnels bore off the fumes from two blocks of boiler rooms that sandwiched the ship's three engine rooms. Laid down in 1896, she went into service six years later, the prototype of the last generation of French armed cruisers: the Edgar Quinet and Léon Gambetta classes.

Commemorative postcard of the visit of French Président Loubet to Algeria in 1903 aboard the brand-new Jeanne d'Arc (Joan of Arc), by far the largest and mightiest cruiser of the French Navy at the time, which presaged a resurgence of French naval building. This design made for a very long, narrow hull, convenient for dispersing the large number of single-mounted quick-firing guns. The 5.4" secondary guns were mounted on two levels: in 3 sponsons along each side of the hull, and in single turrets on the weather deck above: on each side, 4 alongside and forward superstructure from the bridge aft, and one at the aft end of the deckhouse. The ship's main armament consisted of two 7.6" guns in single turrets at bow and stern; there was a step down from the weather deck to the fantail on which the aft 7.6" stood. Constructed at the same time as the Republique class battleships, she was designed with almost straight-up sides: a noteworthy departure from the voluptuous curves of French warships in the 1890s. The more sensible hull shape bore immediate benfits in a smoother ride, much appreciated by long-suffering French navy seamen. The ship retained some elements of the older style, however: the armored foremast with its large gunhouse and internal elevator hark back to the 1890s battleships that had given the French navy such a well-deserved reputation for eccentricity.

At left, another nearly unique feature of this big cruiser: the strangely shaped stern, half-cruiser, half-counter, with its overhang most evident at slow speeds or stopped. As nearly as BBB's research team can determine, this was the only large warship in the French navy to adopt this form; it is, however, curiously reminiscent of the 1898 armored cruisers Terrible and Powerful in Britain's Royal Navy.

At the same time that the Jeanne was building, France built a class of reduced cruisers to similar pattern. These were the Dupleix class of 1903, 7700-ton vessels mounting a poewrful armament of eight 6.4" guns all in twin turrets, disposed in the classic diamond pattern. Only four funnels were required by the smaller steam plant, but they were laid out in two groups with the engine room between, just like the Jeanne d'Arc. This was to become the standard boiler-room layout for French battleships and armored cruisers through WWI.

As mentioned above, one of the ship's high moments came in 1903, when she ferried President Émile Loubet to Algeria and back. France's politics at the time were struggling to emerge from decades of turbulence, with few governments surviving a year in office. Imperial ventures, particularly in Africa, provided a welcome distraction from the knotty social problems at home, and were tacitly encouraged by Britain and Germany to lessen their friction with Paris. It was for one such ceremonial honoring the glory of the French Empire that Loubet's trip occurred. For much of her first decade, the new cruiser was prominent in France's Mediterranean fleet based at Toulon. In 1912, Jeanne d'Arc replaced the Dugay-Trouin as the school ship of the École Navale, departing from the tradition of using ships-of-the-line for this purpose. It was in this part that the cruiser found her niche, for which she is best known because of her long service and unforgettable profile.

Jeanne d'Arc took a responsible rôle in the First World War, at first with the thin Atlantic squadron, and later in the Mediterranean fleet. In this capacity she defended the Suez canalagainst the frontal Turkish attack of 1915, then patrolled the Dardanelles and the Med off Syria and Anatolia, supporting the disastrous Gallipoli and Balkan campaigns. After the War, she was reinstated as school ship, sailing for nine seasons. She was eventually decomissioned in 1928, and struck in 1934.

Specifications for the Jeanne d'Arc:
Dimensions: 475'8" x 63'8" x 26'7" (145m x 19.4m x 8.10m) Displacement: 11,300 tons. Armament: (2) 7.6" guns (194mm) mounted 2x1, and (14) 5.4" (138mm) guns (14 x 1); (26) smaller calibre guns; (5) 18" torpedo tubes. Propulsion: 48 Belleville water-tube boilers; 3 inverted vertical triple-expansion steam engines generating 28,500 HP; triple screw. Speed: 23 knots. Crew: 714. Schematic plan

Jeanne d'Arc was as majestic in her exits as in her entrances. Undoubtedly her imperious presence impressed the Algerians with France's unassailable might. This evocative silhouette provides another risqué glimpse of the ship's stern, as naughty as a line of can-can dancers at the Moulin Rouge.

This photo shows the Jeanne d'Arc's long, narrow, slab-sided hull to advantage despite some condition problems with the print. Technician "Radar" Radetzky offers his apologies; an 800-mile trek from Ulan Bator by yak train to the wilds of Outer Mongolia was required to retrieve this photo: the only known print of this negative still extant in the whole world. But that harrowing journey was only the beginning. Back in the BBB labs, months of painstaking labor under high-powered magnifying glasses were required just to clean the yak dung off the bleached areas at top. Further weeks of processing chemically restabilized the distressed photographic emulsion and restored tone through lithium-isotope magnetic emolument. The magnificently restored 3x7 cm photo will be featured on Antiques Road Show's next visit to Devil's Den, Tasmania, winter headquarters of the Royal Tasmanian Y.C.

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The Amiral Aube shows the characteristics of the Gloire class: great length and height, 4 funnels in 2 groups of 2. Like the Jeanne d'Arc, this is a transitional ship. She still sports an armored foremast with octagonal gunhouse, but has a pole main. These ships were an improvement of the preceding Gueydon class with refinements in the secondary armament layout.

As in the jeune école period, the Marine Nationale built several classes of smaller armored cruisers in descending tiers of size, armament, and protection. The 10,000-ton Gloire class of 4 ships were workhorses of the French fleet; they were supplemented by two 3-ship classes of smaller armored cruisers: the 9,400-ton Gueydon class and the 7,600-ton Dupleix class, each of which lost one ship in the War. At some future point BBB may feature more of these ships, but for now the Aube will stand for all the smaller armor of the French navy in this period: and she was not a small ship except by comparison with the very largest of her time.

Laid down at Penhoët in 1899 and named for the founder of the French Naval Academy, the Amiral Aube compiled quite a war record. Like the rest of her sisters she served with the Atlantic squadron throughout WWI. In the cconcluding phase of the War she was ordered to Murmansk to support an Allied expeditionary force sent to keep a vast cache of Allied war matériel in northern Russia out of Bolshevik hands. At war's end the Aube represented France in Operation ZZ, the formal surrender of the German High Seas Fleet on Nov. 22, 1918. She was withdrawn in 1922 and subsequently scrapped. The other members of the class served in the Atlantic; all were convoy escorts late in the War. Marseillaise was the escort ship for the SS George Washington conveying President Wilson back from Europe after the Versailles Treaty negotiations that ended WWI. She survived until 1929; her sister Condé, the last extant member of the class, made it to 1933. A fifth sister, the Sully, was irretrievably wrecked off the coast of Vietnam in 1905, only a few months after hoisting her commission pennant.

Specifications:
Dimensions: 459'4" x 65'7¾" x 25'4" (140m x 20m x 7.7m) Displacement: 9,534 tons. Armament: (2) 7.6" Model 1893 (194mm) mounted 2x1, (8) 6.4" Model 1893 QF guns (164.7mm) mounted 4x2, and (6) 3.9" guns (100mm) mounted 6x1; (2) 18" torpedo tubes (450mm). Armor: 5.9" belt (150mm); 6.7" turrets (170mm); 1.57" deck (40mm). Propulsion: 8 coal-fired boilers, (3) inverted vertical triple-expansion steam engines, developing 21,800 SHP, shafted to triple screw. Speed: 21.5 knots. Crew: 615. Ships in class: Amiral Aube, Condé, La Gloire, Marseillaise, Sully.

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This dramatic viw of the name ship emphasizes her resemblance to the République/Liberté group: notable tumble-home amidships; square scuttles; armament layout identical to the battleship group.

The three Léon Gambettas were very slightly larger than the Jeanne d'Arc, a knot slower, but more heavily armed. Where Jeanne had embodied jeune école design doctrine in her multiple single mounts, the Gambetta class embodied the new thinking of Louis-Émile Bertin, Director of Naval Construction and Ingénieur général, who had shaken things up with his Républiqe class battleships of 1903. The Gambettas shared many details with the battleships: the individual funnel caps, the concave line of the bow, the foremast a scaled-down version of the battleships' masts. But more essentially, their gunnery layout with its emphasis on twin turrets was identical to the Républiques. Four 7.6" guns in twin turrets benefited from improved armor protection around the bases; 12 quick-firing 6.4" guns in twin turrets were ranged 3 to a side along the weather deck, just as the Républiques' secondary armament; again like the Républiques, the aft turret stood on a stepped-down quarterdeck. And even as in the battleships, 4 secondary guns in casemates on the main deck provided axial fire ahead and astern. Utilizing the by-now standard sandwiched-engine-rooms layout, the cruisers made do with 4 lofty funnels, 2 fewer than the Jeanne d'Arc. With 4,000 fewer HP on their 3 shafts, they still were good for 22 knots, even with their heavier armor.

Before the start of WWI, the British and French redeployed their fleets, the British bringing most of their armor home to face the Germans in the North Sea while the French transferred most of their Atlantic coast units to the Mediterranean. There was an explicit agreement that each nation would cover its ally's rear in the event of war. All the Gambetta class were pressed into wartime service in the Mediterranean. Léon Gambetta was part of the French Fleet based at Malta blockading the the Austrian Navy in the Adriatic, usually from a position south of the Strait of Otranto between that body and the French base at Corfu.

On the clear, calm night of April 26-27, 1915, Léon Gambetta was patrolling the Ionian Sea about 15 miles south of Cape Santa Maria di Leuca on the SE tip of Italy. At the approximate position 39.30’N, 18.15’E, she was torpedoed twice by the Austrian submarine U-5, under the command of Lt. Cdr. Georg von Trapp. The ship was cruising at only 6.5 knots with no escort, a sitting duck target. U-5 fired her fish at a range of under 500 yards. One torpedo hit the port side dynamo room and the other, the aft boiler room. The stricken cruiser took only 10 minutes to sink. Of the 821 men aboard, 684 were lost, including Rear-Adm Sénès, commander of the 2nd Light Division; 137 surved. After this disaster, the blockade line was moved further north to the longitude of Cephalonia, western Greece, because of expected Austrian naval activity. At the time, Italy had not yet openly joined the war on Austria, and was technically Austria's ally through the Treaty of the Triple Alliance (the third partner being Germany). The Allies were pressuring the Italians, soon after prevailing on them to declare war on Austria-Hungary.

Specifications for the Léon Gambetta class:
Dimensions: Length: 476' x 71' x 26¼' (159m x 21.6m x 8.4m) Displacement: 12,400 tons. Armament: (4) 7.6" (194mm) mounted 2x2; (16) 6.4" QF guns (164.7mm) mounted 6x2, 4x1. Propulsion: 24,000-HP VTE steam engines; triple screw. Speed: 22 knots. Crew: 730. Ships in class: Léon Gambetta, Jules Ferrer, Victor Hugo. In service: 1905-07. Schematic

And here she is from the other side.

A handsome postcard of her sister ship Victor Hugo.

Lt. Cdr. Georg von Trapp, who was knighted for his exploit in sinking the Gambetta. Von Trapp went on to command the main Austro-Hungarian sub base at Cattaro, to be promoted admiral, to emigrate to Vermont after the Anschluss (annexation by Nazi Germany), to found a resort with his second wife Maria. Much later, in the 1960s, the couple achieved worldwide fame through the Broadway and film musical The Sound of Music, loosely based on their romance as told from her point of view. Although the family has expressed frustration with the many liberties Rogers & Hammerstein took to make their story more appealing, one assumes the von Trapps were glad to get their royalty checks over the years.

Colourised photo postcard of the U-5. This was a small, first-generation Austrian sub built at the Whitehead torpedo works on the Adriatic. Following his success with the Gambetta and sinking the French sub Néreide in the war's only fatal sub-on-sub torpedo duel, von Trapp became a national hero in Austria-Hungary (this was far from being the only combat between subs in the war, however). As the first step up the greasy pole of promotion, von Trapp was given command of a more recent and powerful submarine.

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The Edgar Quinet Class, 1903/1911

A colorized postcard of the Edgar Quinet shows her derivation from the Jeanne d'Arc, and also her greater modernity. The ship shares the look of the 5-funnel Danton class battleships of 1909-10: plumb stem, standardized pole masts, straight-sided hull with stepped-down fantail, patent anchors, and recessed anchor beds in the hull. The gun disposition shown below precisely tracked that of the Liberté and Danton class battleships with scaled-down weapons, but it was decided to switch to a uniform calibre. There were two ships in this class, 3,000 tons larger than Jeanne d'Arc and more heavily armed. The original disposition design had four 7.6" guns in twin turrets fore and aft, and twelve 6.4" in twins along the sides, and an additional four in single casemates at the corners of the superstructure. Early in construction this was changed to all 7.6" guns with the six top deck turrets changed to single 7.6" mounts, giving the ship a withering broadside of nine 7.6" barrels and a clear firepower advantage over the preceding Gambetta and Jules Michelet classes. The arrangement of boiler and engine rooms, funnels, and screws followed the model used in the French fleet since the Jeanne d'Arc. Driven by three 12,000-HP triple-expansion engines, these were the largest, grandest, and final French armored cruisers.

Both the Quinet and the Waldeck-Rousseau survived WWI, when they were stationed in the Mediterranean. The Quinet was wrecked in thick fog, running aground off the coast of Algeria on January 4, 1930. All attempts to free her failed, and she sank January 9. No lives were lost in this incident.

Specifications for the Edgar Quinet class:
Dimensions: Length: 521'4" Beam: 70'8" Draft: 27'6" (159m x 21.6m x 8.4m) Std Displacement: 14,100 tons. Main Armament: (14) 7.6"/50 Model 1902 (194mm) guns mounted 2x2, 10x1 (see note above); (8) 9-pdr, (24) 3-pdr guns; (2) 18" torpedo tubes. Fuel capacity: 1400 tons of coal std; 2300 tons maximum. Propulsion: 40 coal-fired Belleville boilers; (3) inverted vertical triple expansion engines, 36,000 SHP, shafted to triple screw. Speed: 23 knots. Crew: 860 peacetime; 892 wartime. Endurance: 6,560 nm @ 10 knots. Maximum Range: 28,390 yards @ 45° elevation (16.1 miles) with a 197.3 lb. AP projectile (metric range 25.96 km; projectile weight ~89.5 kg). Ships in class: Edgar Quinet, Waldeck-Rousseau.

The Edgar Quinet in captivating detail, in a rather garishly hand-colored B&W photo card. (Garishness greatly reduced by the painstaking efforts of BBB's digital darkroom wizard, Ross "Radar" Radetzsky, who had to get new Rx sunglasses after this job!) Like the Dantons, these were splendid-looking ships.

Quarter view of the sister-ship Waldeck-Rousseau, named for a 19th-century French prime minister.

Relevant Weblinks:

• French Cruisers, 1882-1898
• U.S. Armored Cruisers, 1905-1910
• Revisit Cruiser Intro/Index Page
• Biography of Georg Ritter von Trapp - WWI Naval Hero
• The U-Boat War in the Mediterranean - WWI History from Uboat.net
• The German Navy, 1869-1919
• The French Navy, 1850-1916
• Big, Bad Battleships Global Site Nav
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