French battleship Patrie (1903)
Encyclopedia
The Patrie 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...
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...
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 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.
Design
The Patrie 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
The Patrie was involved in two accidents. One, in late May 1907, involved a condensing pipe bursting in one of her boilers and forced her to abandon her trials. Several stokers were scalded. In 1910 the battleship again was in an accident, but not on the receiving end. Her sister ship, the RepubliqueFrench battleship République (1902)
The République was a pre-dreadnought République class battleship of the French Navy. She served from 1906 to 1921. She was moored near the Liberté when the latter exploded accidentally in 1911, and was damaged by flying debris...
was struck by a torpedo launched from the Patrie and was forced to return to Toulon to repair hull damage. After serving in the defense of the French coast during World War I, she was disarmed after the war and used as a torpedo training ship before being scrapped in 1928.