Design and production

The Vergniaud was commissioned on 22 September 1911 and served throughout World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

. The ship was the last of the Danton-class

Danton class battleship

The Danton class was a class of French battleships built between 1907–1911, which served in World War I. The six ships in the class were all pre-dreadnought battleships, the last of their kind produced in the French Navy.-Design and production:...

 of battleships to be commissioned, and as such she was the last 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...

 naval vessel to be produced by France. The body of the ship was built on the dockyard of the Gironde Works in the province of Bordeaux

Bordeaux

Bordeaux is a port city on the Garonne River in the Gironde department in southwestern France.The Bordeaux-Arcachon-Libourne metropolitan area, has a population of 1,010,000 and constitutes the sixth-largest urban area in France. It is the capital of the Aquitaine region, as well as the prefecture...

 and was named for Pierre Victurnien Vergniaud

Pierre Victurnien Vergniaud

Pierre Victurnien Vergniaud was a lawyer and statesman, and a significant figure of the French Revolution. A deputy to the Assembly from Bordeaux, Vergniaud was a notably eloquent and impressive orator...

, Bordeaux's most famous statesman of the French Revolution

French Revolution

The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

.

The frame was laid down in July 1908 and the first launch was made on 12 April 1910. The speed of her production was considerably delayed, but on 22 September 1911 she was commissioned after acceptance trials off 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....

.

The completed battleship carried a main battery

Main battery

Generally used only in the terms of naval warfare, the main battery is the primary weapon around which a ship was designed. "Battery" is in itself a common term in the military science of artillery. For example, the United States Navy battleship USS Washington had a main battery of nine guns...

 of four 12-inch guns

305mm/45 Modèle 1906 gun

The 305mm/45 Modèle 1906 gun was a heavy naval gun of the French Navy.The type was used on the s, mounted in two twin turrets. An improved variant, the 305mm/45 Modèle 1910 gun, was installed on the Courbet class.-See also:...

 and a secondary battery of twelve 9.4-inch guns

240mm/50 Modèle 1902 gun

The 240mm/50 Modèle 1902 gun was a heavy naval gun of the French Navy.The type was used on the Danton class battleships as secondary battery, mounted in six twin turrets....

. Ringed by a tertiary battery of smaller arms, she also wielded two 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...

 tubes.

In appearance, the Vergniaud was distinguishable in part for having large single caps on her funnels, rather than the double-capped funnels of the rest of her class. Like her sister ships Diderot

French battleship Diderot (1909)

The Diderot was a pre-dreadnought battleship of the French Navy.-Service History:She participated in the Battle of Antivari in 1914 when a French squadron sortied into the Adriatic and attempted to draw the Austro-Hungarian Navy into a fleet action....

 and Condorcet

French battleship Condorcet (1909)

Condorcet was a pre-dreadnought battleship of the French Navy; the nature of her armament, which included an intermediate calibre between the main and anti-torpedo armament, has usually meant that, in common with , and the Japanese ships of the Aki class, she is regarded as a semi-dreadnought...

, she was made with new Niclausse boilers, which French naval engineers hoped would show improvement over the existing Delaunay-Belleville model. The ship had a designed maximum speed of 19.25 knots.

History

The six Danton-class battleships, along with the capital ships Courbet

French battleship Courbet (1911)

Courbet was the lead ship of her class, the first dreadnoughts built for the French Navy. She was completed before World War I and named in honour of Admiral Amédée Courbet. She spent the war in the Mediterranean, helping to sink the Austro-Hungarian protected cruiser in August 1914...

 and Jean-Bart

French battleship Jean Bart (1911)

Jean Bart was the second ship of the s, the first dreadnoughts built for the French Navy. She was completed before World War I as part of the 1910 naval building programme. She spent the war in the Mediterranean and helped to sink the Austro-Hungarian protected cruiser on 16 August 1914...

, formed the French Navy's Premier Escadron (First Squadron) in the Mediterranean Sea

Mediterranean Sea

The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean surrounded by the Mediterranean region and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Anatolia and Europe, on the south by North Africa, and on the east by the Levant...

. Led by Vice Admiral Paul Chocheprat, the squadron moved early to seek action against the Austro-Hungarian

Austria-Hungary

Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...

 navy, and took part 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...

 in the Adriatic Sea

Adriatic Sea

The Adriatic Sea is a body of water separating the Italian Peninsula from the Balkan peninsula, and the system of the Apennine Mountains from that of the Dinaric Alps and adjacent ranges...

 in August 1914. The rest of the Vergniauds wartime activity consisted largely of patrolling the Allied sealanes in the eastern Mediterranean.

After the war's end, the Vergniaud was among the ships stationed off Sevastopol

Sevastopol

Sevastopol is a city on rights of administrative division of Ukraine, located on the Black Sea coast of the Crimea peninsula. It has a population of 342,451 . Sevastopol is the second largest port in Ukraine, after the Port of Odessa....

 as an Allied deterrent to Soviet forces who were encroaching on the city during the Russian civil war

Russian Civil War

The Russian Civil War was a multi-party war that occurred within the former Russian Empire after the Russian provisional government collapsed to the Soviets, under the domination of the Bolshevik party. Soviet forces first assumed power in Petrograd The Russian Civil War (1917–1923) was a...

. Despite Allied support, the city's White Russian

White movement

The White movement and its military arm the White Army - known as the White Guard or the Whites - was a loose confederation of Anti-Communist forces.The movement comprised one of the politico-military Russian forces who fought...

 forces were in a seemingly hopeless position, and in April 1919 the French naval high command ordered the ships to evacuate. Rejecting this, the commander of Second Squadron, Vice-Admiral Jean-François-Charles Amet, attempted to have his forces intervene in the fighting, only to have a mutiny erupt on several of his ships. War-weary sailors demanded to return home and the ensuing standoff culminated in a mass shooting of sailor demonstrators. Fifteen people were wounded, but only one died, and that unique victim happened to be a sailor from the Vergniaud. The battleship's crew had thus far remained neutral in the conflict but quickly joined the ranks of the most radical mutineers, unfurling red banners in support of the Bolshevik

Bolshevik

The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....

forces. The four-day stalemate ended in a victory for the sailors: the ships withdrew from the Black Sea and the Vergniaud returned safely to France.

Decommission and legacy

The Danton-class ships performed soundly in their wartime roles, but by the end of the war they had long been surpassed technologically. The Vergniaud remained moored in port until she was decommissioned in 1921. She was later relegated to use as a target ship, and her hull was broken up for scrap in 1928.

A monument to the French mutineers of 1919 was erected by the Soviets in Sevastopol, at Morskaïa Square where the killing of the Vergniaud sailor took place.

External links

• CUIRASSE Danton