French battleship Bouvet
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Pre-dreadnought
Pre-dreadnought battleship is the general term for all of the types of sea-going battleships built between the mid-1890s and 1905. Pre-dreadnoughts replaced the ironclad warships of the 1870s and 1880s...
battleship
Battleship
A battleship is a large armored warship with a main battery consisting of heavy caliber guns. Battleships were larger, better armed and armored than cruisers and destroyers. As the largest armed ships in a fleet, battleships were used to attain command of the sea and represented the apex of a...
, launched in 1896 and sunk by a mine in 1915 during World War I.
Bouvet, named for the maritime family of Bouvet de Lozier, the most famous being French Admiral François Joseph Bouvet
François Joseph Bouvet
- Early life :Son of a captain in the service of the French East India Company, he went to sea at the age of twelve with his father aboard the Villevault in 1765. In 1780, Bouvet served in the East Indies in the famous campaign of 1781–83 under the command of Suffren...
, belonged to the Jauréguiberry quasi-class which comprised Bouvet, Jauréguiberry
French battleship Jauréguiberry
Jauréguiberry was a pre-dreadnought battleship of the French Navy , launched in 1893. She was one of the class of five roughly similar battleships built in the 1890s, including Masséna, Bouvet, Carnot, and Charles Martel; Jauréguiberry and the latter two are sometimes erroneously referenced as a...
, Carnot
French battleship Carnot (1894)
The Carnot was an ironclad battleship of the French Navy. She was laid down in 1891, launched in 1894 and completed in 1897. She was refitted once in the early 1900s.-Design:...
, Charles Martel, and Masséna.
Bouvet, along with her sister ships, was something of a throwback to earlier French ironclad designs, with a low displacement, a relatively high hull with an exaggerated tumblehome
Tumblehome
In ship designing, the tumblehome is the narrowing of a ship's hull with greater distance above the water-line. Expressed more technically, it is present when the beam at the uppermost deck is less than the maximum beam of the vessel....
, cluttered and unprotected upperworks, and single guns in small turrets, with her main battery comprising two 12 inch and two 10.8 inch guns, the latter in sponson
Sponson
Sponsons are projections from the sides of a watercraft, for protection, stability, or the mounting of equipment such as armaments or lifeboats, etc...
s. Despite her out-of-date features, Bouvet along with Masséna, pioneered triple-shaft propulsion for battleships, and they had face-hardened armour
Armour
Armour or armor is protective covering used to prevent damage from being inflicted to an object, individual or a vehicle through use of direct contact weapons or projectiles, usually during combat, or from damage caused by a potentially dangerous environment or action...
above the waterline, making them some of the most powerfully protected warships of their era.
Loss off the Dardanelles
The Bouvet was part of the squadronSquadron (naval)
A squadron, or naval squadron, is a unit of 3-4 major warships, transport ships, submarines, or sometimes small craft that may be part of a larger task force or a fleet...
contributed by the French to the Dardanelles Campaign. On 18 March 1915, the British commander, Rear Admiral
Rear Admiral
Rear admiral is a naval commissioned officer rank above that of a commodore and captain, and below that of a vice admiral. It is generally regarded as the lowest of the "admiral" ranks, which are also sometimes referred to as "flag officers" or "flag ranks"...
John de Robeck
John de Robeck
Admiral of the Fleet Sir John Michael de Robeck, 1st Baronet GCB, GCMG, GCVO was an admiral in the British Royal Navy who commanded the Allied naval force in the Dardanelles during World War I....
, launched a concerted effort to overwhelm the Turkish
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
forts defending the Dardanelles
Dardanelles
The Dardanelles , formerly known as the Hellespont, is a narrow strait in northwestern Turkey connecting the Aegean Sea to the Sea of Marmara. It is one of the Turkish Straits, along with its counterpart the Bosphorus. It is located at approximately...
straits and Bouvet was one of the four French battleships making up the second line.
Bouvet sustained eight hits from Turkish artillery
Artillery
Originally applied to any group of infantry primarily armed with projectile weapons, artillery has over time become limited in meaning to refer only to those engines of war that operate by projection of munitions far beyond the range of effect of personal weapons...
fire and the forward turret
Turret
In architecture, a turret is a small tower that projects vertically from the wall of a building such as a medieval castle. Turrets were used to provide a projecting defensive position allowing covering fire to the adjacent wall in the days of military fortification...
was disabled. When de Robeck ordered the French line to retire, Bouvet turned to starboard into Erin Keui Bay where a line of mines
Naval mine
A naval mine is a self-contained explosive device placed in water to destroy surface ships or submarines. Unlike depth charges, mines are deposited and left to wait until they are triggered by the approach of, or contact with, an enemy vessel...
lay undetected. The battleship struck a mine below the starboard 274mm turret and suffered a massive explosion, probably of a magazine. Flooding was rapid since the ship lacked effective internal compartmentation (the detonation occurred in a very large machinery space that extended almost a third of the length of the vessel). The ship heeled very rapidly, since the hull was designed (like many French battleships designed by Huin) with a "tumblehome
Tumblehome
In ship designing, the tumblehome is the narrowing of a ship's hull with greater distance above the water-line. Expressed more technically, it is present when the beam at the uppermost deck is less than the maximum beam of the vessel....
" form, meaning the sides sloped inwards; this meant that the hull was losing stability for every degree that it heeled over, which sped up the process of capsizing. Bouvet capsize
Capsize
Capsizing is an act of tipping over a boat or ship to disable it. The act of reversing a capsized vessel is called righting.If a capsized vessel has sufficient flotation to prevent sinking, it may recover on its own if the stability is such that it is not stable inverted...
d and sank within two minutes, taking around 660 crew with her.
Despite the loss of the Bouvet, the first such loss of the day, the British remained unaware of the minefield, thinking the explosion had been caused by a shell or torpedo
Torpedo
The modern torpedo is a self-propelled missile weapon with an explosive warhead, launched above or below the water surface, propelled underwater towards a target, and designed to detonate either on contact with it or in proximity to it.The term torpedo was originally employed for...
. Subsequently two British pre-dreadnought
Pre-dreadnought
Pre-dreadnought battleship is the general term for all of the types of sea-going battleships built between the mid-1890s and 1905. Pre-dreadnoughts replaced the ironclad warships of the 1870s and 1880s...
s, the Ocean
HMS Ocean (1898)
The fourth HMS Ocean was a Canopus-class battleship of the British Royal Navy.-Technical Description:HMS Ocean was laid down at Devonport Dockyard on 15 December 1897, launched on 5 July 1898, and completed in February 1900...
and Irresistible
HMS Irresistible (1898)
HMS Irresistible—the fourth British Royal Navy ship of the name—was a pre-dreadnought battleship.-Technical characteristics:HMS Irresistible was laid down at Chatham Dockyard on 11 April 1898 and launched on 15 December 1898 in a very incomplete state to clear the building ways for the...
, were sunk and the battlecruiser
Battlecruiser
Battlecruisers were large capital ships built in the first half of the 20th century. They were developed in the first decade of the century as the successor to the armoured cruiser, but their evolution was more closely linked to that of the dreadnought battleship...
HMS Inflexible, as well as the pre-dreadnought
Pre-dreadnought
Pre-dreadnought battleship is the general term for all of the types of sea-going battleships built between the mid-1890s and 1905. Pre-dreadnoughts replaced the ironclad warships of the 1870s and 1880s...
s Suffren
French battleship Suffren
Suffren was a pre-dreadnought battleship of the French Navy, launched in July 1899. She was named after French Vice Admiral Pierre André de Suffren de Saint Tropez. The ship was originally intended to be a modified version of the design with more firepower and better armour...
and Gaulois, were damaged by the same minefield.
Gaulois, also with a tumblehome hull form, was later repaired and fitted with large caissons at the sides to prevent the same kind of disaster that befell Bouvet. When Gaulois was torpedoed in 1916, the caissons kept the ship upright long enough for the majority of the crew to evacuate.
The disaster of Bouvet was a major factor in the decision to abandon a naval strategy to take Constantinople
Constantinople
Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...
, and instead opt for the Gallipoli land campaign
Battle of Gallipoli
The Gallipoli Campaign, also known as the Dardanelles Campaign or the Battle of Gallipoli, took place at the peninsula of Gallipoli in the Ottoman Empire between 25 April 1915 and 9 January 1916, during the First World War...
.