French ironclad floating battery Foudroyante

Sister ship Lave
History
France
Name	Foudroyante
Ordered	28 July 1854
Builder	Arsenal de Lorient
Laid down	20 August 1854
Launched	2 June 1855
Commissioned	4 June 1855 (for trials)
Stricken	29 November 1871
Fate	Scrapped, 1874
General characteristics (as built)
Class and type	Dévastation-class ironclad floating battery
Displacement	1,604 t (1,579 long tons)
Length	53 m (173 ft 11 in)
Beam	13.55 m (44 ft 5 in)
Draught	2.8 m (9 ft 2 in)
Installed power	6 locomotive boilers 430 ihp (320 kW)
Propulsion	1 propeller; 1 direct-acting steam engine
Speed	4 knots (7.4 km/h; 4.6 mph)
Crew	282
Armament	16 × single 194 mm (7.6 in) 50 pdr smoothbore guns 2 × single 120 mm (4.7 in) 18 pdr smoothbore guns or 2 × single 12 pdr carronades
Armour	Waterline belt: 110 mm (4.3 in) Battery: 100 mm (3.9 in), plus 440 mm (17.3 in) oak planking

Foudroyant was a Dévastation-class ironclad floating battery built for the French Navy during the Crimean War. Completed in 1855, she was intended to serve in the Baltic Sea against the Russian Empire, but operations there ended before she could leave France.

References

Bibliography

• de Balincourt, Captain & Vincent-Bréchignac, Captain (1973). "French Floating Batteries". F.P.D.S. Newsletter. I (2): 13–20. OCLC 41554533.
• Gille, Eric (1999). Cent ans de cuirassés français [A Century of French Battleships] (in French). Nantes: Marines. ISBN 2-909-675-50-5.
• Roberts, Stephen S. (2021). French Warships in the Age of Steam 1859–1914: Design, Construction, Careers and Fates. Barnsley, UK: Seaforth Publishing. ISBN 978-1-5267-4533-0.
• Roche, Jean-Michel (2005). Dictionnaire des bâtiments de la flotte de guerre française de Colbert à nos jours [Dictionary of French Warships from Colbert to Today] (in French). Vol. Tome I: 1671–1870. Toulon: Roche. ISBN 978-2-9525917-0-6. OCLC 165892922.