French battleship La Gloire

300px The Gloire, first ocean-going ironclad warship
Career (France)
Namesake:	Glory
Builder:	Toulon, France
Laid down:	April 1858
Launched:	24 November 1859
Commissioned:	August 1860
Decommissioned:	1879
Fate:	Scrapped in 1883
General characteristics
Class and type:	armoured frigate
Displacement:	5,630 tonnes
Length:	77.8 m
Beam:	17 m
Draught:	8.4 m
Propulsion:	Sail (1100 m²) single shaft HRCR (horizontal return), 2,500 hp (1.9MW) steam engine, 8 oval boilers
Speed:	13 knots
Endurance:	665 tonnes of coal
Complement:	570 men
Armament:	36 × 163 mm rifled muzzle-loaders model (1858/60) After 1866 8 × 239 mm and BL model 1864, 6 × 193 mm BL model 1866
Armour:	110 to 119 mm iron plates

The French Navy's La Gloire ("Glory") was the first ocean-going ironclad battleship in history.

She was developed 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 increased destructive power against wooden ships, and 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, and was launched at the arsenal of Mourillon, Toulon, on 24 November 1859. Two sister-ships were built.

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. Her 12cm-thick protection plates, backed with 43cm of timber, resisted the experimental firing of the strongest guns of the time (the French 50-pounder and the British 68-pounder) at full charge, at a distance of 20 metres. Her official top speed was 13.1 knots but other reports suggested no more than 11.75 knots had been reached and that 11 knots was the practical maximum.

Despite these qualities, the ship proved quite hard on the crew as any opening had been forbidden, in order to avoid piercing the protection plate: ventilation was poor, and oil lamps had to be used for light.

La Gloire initiated the obsolescence of traditional unarmoured wooden ships-of-the-line, and all major navies had no choice but to build ironclads of their own. The word had it that Gloire fighting against conventional ships of the time would be comparable to "a wolf wreaking 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 was near Cherbourg during the historic American Civil War defeat of the Confederate commerce raider CSS Alabama by the USS Kearsarge on 19 June 1864 off the same harbour.

In 1879, La Gloire was delisted from the French fleet registry and scrapped in 1883. Her sister ships had been scrapped years earlier because of their poor construction.

La Gloire had two sister ships:

• Invincible, laid down in Toulon May 1858, launched 4 April 1861, commissioned March 1862, scrapped 1871.
• Normandie, laid down in Cherbourg 14 September 1858, launched 3 October 1860, commissioned 13 May 1862, scrapped 1872.

See also

• French ship Gloire for eponymous ships

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

[[Commons: Category:French ship Gloire (1859)

| French ship Gloire (1859)

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• Steam, Steel and Shellfire: The steam warship 1815-1905 - Conway's History of the ship ISBN 0-7858-1413-2
• Musée de la Marine, Paris

• LaGloirePhotography.jpg

  Photography of La Gloire, circa 1860, at the Musee de la Marine

• LaGloireLaunch.jpg

  The launch of La Gloire

• LaGloire.jpg

  La Gloire

• La Gloire.jpg

  La Gloire in the Illustrated London News.

• Gloire.jpg

  La Gloire, 19th century print

• LaGloireModel.jpg

  Scale model of La Gloire at the Musée de la Marine, Paris

• MuseeMarine-cuirasse1880-p1000463.jpg

  Scale model

• LaGloireFrontView.jpg

  Scale model

• Couronne-bougault-2.jpg

  Couronne, near sister-ship of Gloire after she was rebuilt