The French Navy

French Navy

The French Navy, officially the Marine nationale and often called La Royale is the maritime arm of the French military. It includes a full range of fighting vessels, from patrol boats to a nuclear powered aircraft carrier and 10 nuclear-powered submarines, four of which are capable of launching...

's La Gloire ("Glory") was the first ocean-going ironclad 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...

 in history.

She was developed following the Crimean War

Crimean War

The Crimean War was a conflict fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the French Empire, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Sardinia. The war was part of a long-running contest between the major European powers for influence over territories of the declining...

, in response to new developments in naval gun technology, especially the Paixhans gun

Paixhans gun

The Paixhans gun was the first naval gun designed to fire explosive shells. It was developed by the French general Henri-Joseph Paixhans in 1822-1823.-Background:...

s and rifled guns

Rifling

Rifling is the process of making helical grooves in the barrel of a gun or firearm, which imparts a spin to a projectile around its long axis...

, 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

Dupuy de Lome

Dupuy de Lome may refer to:* Enrique Dupuy de Lôme, Spanish Minister to the United States in 1892* Henri Dupuy de Lôme, a French naval architect in the 19th century...

, and was launched at the arsenal of Mourillon, Toulon

Toulon

Toulon is a town in southern France and a large military harbor on the Mediterranean coast, with a major French naval base. Located in the Provence-Alpes-Côte-d'Azur region, Toulon is the capital of the Var department in the former province of Provence....

, 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 12 cm-thick (4.7 in) protection plates, backed with 43 cm (17 in) 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 (65 ft). 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.

As was common for the era, La Gloire was constructed with sails as well as a steam-powered screw. The original riggings were a light barquentine rig

Barquentine

A barquentine is a sailing vessel with three or more masts; with a square rigged foremast and fore-and-aft rigged main, mizzen and any other masts.-Modern barquentine sailing rig:...

 providing 1,096 sq. m (11,800 sq. ft) of surface area. This was later increased to a full rig

Full rigged ship

A full rigged ship or fully rigged ship is a sailing vessel with three or more masts, all of them square rigged. A full rigged ship is said to have a ship rig....

 providing 2,508 sq. m (27,000 sq. ft) of surface.

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

HMS Warrior (1860)

HMS Warrior was the first iron-hulled, armour-plated warship, built for the Royal Navy in response to the first ironclad warship, the French Gloire, launched a year earlier....

, the world's first iron hulled warship. La Gloire was near Cherbourg during the historic American Civil War

American Civil War

The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...

 defeat of the Confederate commerce raider CSS Alabama

CSS Alabama

CSS Alabama was a screw sloop-of-war built for the Confederate States Navy at Birkenhead, United Kingdom, in 1862 by John Laird Sons and Company. Alabama served as a commerce raider, attacking Union merchant and naval ships over the course of her two-year career, during which she never anchored in...

 by the USS Kearsarge

USS Kearsarge (1861)

USS Kearsarge, a Mohican-class sloop-of-war, is best known for her defeat of the Confederate commerce raider CSS Alabama during the American Civil War. The Kearsarge was the only ship of the United States Navy named for Mount Kearsarge in New Hampshire...

 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.