![]() ![]() It includes everything from the largest battleships to a small armoured gunboat that looked like a floating egg. This book is the first comprehensive listing in English of more than 1400 warships that were added to the official French navy fleet list between 1 January 1859 and World War I. In 1914 this fleet remained well behind those of Britain and Germany in numbers, but taken individually French warships remained among the best in the world. The Fashoda dispute with Britain in 1898 revealed the weakness of the French navy and between 19 the French focused on rebuilding a strong battle fleet. In the 1880s and 1890s this effort was disrupted by a vigorous contest between battleship sailors and advocates of fast steel cruisers and small torpedo craft, leaving France by the end of the 1890s with few new battleships (none as large as the best foreign ships) but some two hundred torpedo boats. In the 1860s and 1870s it focused on building a new traditionally-structured fleet in which wooden-hulled battleships gave way to iron and steel ships with massive guns and armour. The French navy then went through three tumultuous phases. But in that very year the world’s navies had to start over again when French naval architect Dupuy de Lôme introduced the ironclad battleship. In 1859 the French navy was at a high point, having fought alongside the British in the Crimean War and developed a formidable fleet of fast wooden-hulled steam ships of the line. ![]()
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