The Vétéran was a development from the Téméraire class

Téméraire class ship of the line

The Téméraire class ships of the line was a class of 107 74-gun ships of the line built between 1782 and 1813 for the French navy. The type was and remains the most numerous class of capital ship ever built....

 74-gun ship of the line 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...

, one of two ships of a sub-class of which the other vessel was the Cassard. The two ships, both built by Pierre Ozanne

Pierre Ozanne

Pierre Ozanne was a French naval artist and engineer, brother of Nicolas Ozanne.- Biography :From 1750, Ozanne was schooled at the Ecole des Gardes de la Marine, ancestor of the École Navale, and in Paris, where he was a pupil of Duhamel du Monceau...

 at Brest to the plans of Jacques-Noël Sané

Jacques-Noël Sané

Jacques-Noël Sané was a French naval engineer, one of the most successful shipbuilders of the Age of Sail.Sané studied under Duhamel du Monceau...

, were enlarged from the earlier class in order to carry an upper deck battery of 24pdr guns (instead of the 18pdrs in the Téméraire class).

Ordered as Magnanime, she was renamed to Quatorze Juillet on 7 May 1798, and eventually to Vétéran on 6 December 1802.

On 13 December 1805, captained by Jérôme Bonaparte

Jérôme Bonaparte

Jérôme-Napoléon Bonaparte, French Prince, King of Westphalia, 1st Prince of Montfort was the youngest brother of Napoleon, who made him king of Westphalia...

, she departed Brest as a unit of Willaumez

Jean-Baptiste Philibert Willaumez

Jean-Baptiste Philibert Willaumez was a French sailor and admiral of the First French Empire....

 division, in the context of the Atlantic campaign of 1806

Atlantic campaign of 1806

The Atlantic campaign of 1806 was a complicated series of manoeuveres and counter-manoeuveres conducted by squadrons of the French Navy and the British Royal Navy across the Atlantic Ocean during the spring and summer of 1806, as part of the Napoleonic Wars...

. The division was scattered by a hurricane and Vétéran found herself isolated. She cruised off Quebec, destroying merchantmen and skirmishing with Royal Navy forces. She eventually returned to France and escaped the British blockade by fleeing into Concarneau

Concarneau

Concarneau is a commune in the Finistère department of Brittany in north-western France.The town has two distinct areas: the modern town on the mainland and the medieval Ville Close, a walled town on a long island in the centre of the harbour. Historically, the old town was a centre of shipbuilding...

, thanks to the experience of a sailor who had been a fisherman in the region. Vétéran found herself trapped, however, and could not exit the harbour for years.

In 1812, she sailed from Lorient to Brest under captain Jurien de Lagravière.

She was eventually decommissioned in 1833, and broken up in 1842.

Sources and references

• Ships of the line