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French battleship République (1902)
Encyclopedia
The République was a 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...
République class battleship
République class battleship
The République class was a class of two pre-Dreadnought ironclads of the French Navy.-Design:The République marked a significant evolution in the design of French ironclads, with less significant tumblehome than her predecessors, better sailing qualities, larger size, and more firepower...
of 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...
. She served from 1906 to 1921. She was moored near the Liberté
French battleship Liberté (1905)
The Liberté was a pre-dreadnought battleship of the French Navy, and the lead ship of her class. Commanded by capitaine de vaisseau Louis Jaurès, She sailed to the United States after her commissioning...
when the latter exploded accidentally in 1911, and was damaged by flying debris. Seeing little service in the First World War, she was scrapped soon afterwards.
Design
The République was 134 metres (439.6 ft) long, had a maximum beamBeam (nautical)
The beam of a ship is its width at the widest point. Generally speaking, the wider the beam of a ship , the more initial stability it has, at expense of reserve stability in the event of a capsize, where more energy is required to right the vessel from its inverted position...
of 24 metres (78.7 ft) and a draught
Draft (hull)
The draft of a ship's hull is the vertical distance between the waterline and the bottom of the hull , with the thickness of the hull included; in the case of not being included the draft outline would be obtained...
of 8.4 metres (27.6 ft). The ship was propelled by three vertical triple expansion steam engines. On trials, they developed 18000 ihp and drove the ship to a maximum speed of 19 knots (10.3 m/s).
The ship's main armament was four 305 mm Modèle 1893/96 guns in two twin turrets. Each turret had an arc of fire of 250°. The guns could probably be depressed to −5° and elevated to 15°. They fired 340 kilograms (749.6 lb) projectiles at the rate of 1 round per minute at a muzzle velocity
Muzzle velocity
Muzzle velocity is the speed a projectile has at the moment it leaves the muzzle of the gun. Muzzle velocities range from approximately to in black powder muskets , to more than in modern rifles with high-performance cartridges such as the .220 Swift and .204 Ruger, all the way to for tank guns...
of 780 metres per second (2,559.1 ft/s) which gave a range of 12000 m (13,123.4 yd) at maximum elevation.
Her secondary armament consisted of eighteen 164 mm Modèle 1896
Canon de 164 mm Modèle 1893
The Canon de 164 mm Modèle 1893 was a medium-caliber naval gun used as the secondary armament of a number of French pre-dreadnoughts and armoured cruisers during World War I...
guns mounted in casemate
Casemate
A casemate, sometimes rendered casement, is a fortified gun emplacement or armored structure from which guns are fired. originally a vaulted chamber in a fortress.-Origin of the term:...
d pivot mounts. The guns had the ability to depress to -10° and elevate to +25°. The guns fired 52 kilograms (114.6 lb) shells at a muzzle velocity of 865 metres per second (2,837.9 ft/s) to a maximum range of 9000 metres (9,842.5 yd). The ship was also fitted with five 45 centimetres (17.7 in) torpedo tubes, two of which were submerged, the others being above water.
Service history
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...
was accidentally launched from her sister ship Patrie
French battleship Patrie (1903)
The Patrie was a pre-dreadnought battleship of the French Navy. She was commissioned in December 1906 and served in the French Navy during the First World War, afterwards being converted to use as a torpedo school ship until being scrapped in 1928....
. The torpedo struck the République, damaging her hull.
On 25 September 1911, the battleship Liberté
French battleship Liberté (1905)
The Liberté was a pre-dreadnought battleship of the French Navy, and the lead ship of her class. Commanded by capitaine de vaisseau Louis Jaurès, She sailed to the United States after her commissioning...
was moored near Republique in 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....
. An accidental explosion occurred aboard the Liberté, destroying her and hurling debris into the air. République was hit by an armour plate from Liberté, wounding several of her crew. The explosion was a result of the spontaneous combustion of nitrocellulose gel, the preferred propellant of the French Navy at that time. In 1914 she participated in the Battle of Antivari
Battle of Antivari
The Battle of Antivari was a naval engagement between the French, British and Austro-Hungarian navies at the start of World War I. The Austrian light cruiser and the destroyer were bombarding the town of Antivari, today known as Bar, when on 16 August 1914 they were cut off by a large...
, helping to sink the Austrian light cruiser Zenta. After World War I, in which she saw minimal service, République was towed to the breakers and scrapped in 1921.