The "most" of all french frigates

What about the Marques de La Fayette's flagship, Hermoine?  Was it not the French fleet's blockade of Yorktown that prevented the English from reinforcing Cornwallis and ensuring Washington's victory?  This key maneuver is the singular event that ensured the creation of the United States of America.

I think the 40gun Piemontaise  might be a good candidate. Active in the Indian Ocean for a lengthy period, captured some valuable ships, and did put up a determined fight against in her last battle. Actually, displayed quite a bit of tenacity with respect to repairing battle damage.

Best handled French national ship is probably the 24gun Bayonnaise, a corvette(sloop), which captured the 32gun Frigate Ambuscade in a stiff fight.

I do not think there was a French version of the Constitution or President.

In one respect, the 'most' might be Renomenee ( sic. wish I could spell her name right ), captured by the Brits and so admired that didn't the English promptly clone a whole series of her? Very influential in terms of frigate design.

Celestino wrote:

I think the 40gun Piemontaise  might be a good candidate. Active in the Indian Ocean for a lengthy period, captured some valuable ships, and did put up a determined fight against in her last battle. Actually, displayed quite a bit of tenacity with respect to repairing battle damage. Best handled French national ship is probably the 20gun Bayonnaise, a corvette(sloop), which captured the 42gun Frigate Ambuscade in a stiff fight. I do not think there was a French version of the Constitution or President.

Minor quibble:   Bayonnaise was a 24 gun corvette.   The HMS Ambruscade was a 32 gun frigate.   Bayonnaise did not really defeat the Ambruscade through superior handling.  She won mainly because she had a secret weapon aboard - a large detachment of infantry.  

During the Napoleonic war, the French did in fact build 44 gun 24 pounder frigates entirely comparable to USS Constitution and President.  Many of them saw very active service.  The conforntation concocted in the movie Master and Commander is not that far fetched eventhough no French heavy frigate were ever build in American yards.

In terms of actual accomplishment, it is also necessary to set aside myth and compare real figures.  The 44 gun 24 pounder USS Constitution and USS President's status is not really matched by the caliber of the enemy they've beaten.   All the forces they've fought and defeated were much lighter and weaker than they were.   The only instance during the war of 1812 when an American Frigate engaged a British frigate of equal force, the USS Cheasepeak was decisively beaten and captured by HMS Shannon.
Compared to this, some relatively little known French frigates did in fact do rather better than any of the legendary American frigate on several occassions:

The 44 gun Bellone is a strong candidate.  She first fought a single ship action with the 52 gun Portuguese Frigate Minerva and captured her.    Then with the Minerve and the sloop Victor, she fought and defeated a superior British squadron of consisting of 4 Frigates, HMS Iphigenia, HMS Megicienne, HMS Sirius, and HMS Nereide, capturing the Iphigenia and the Nereide.  

There is also the ultimate match of equals:  The French Frigate Surveillante and British frigate HMS Quebec, both of exactly the same strength, fought for 4 hours until both ships sank.  Nelson's patron Captain Farmer was killed whne the Quebec sank.

BTW, a final note on the Ambruscade.   After being captured by the French, Ambruscade was commissioned into the Napoleonic French navy as the Embruscade.   In 1805, she run into none other than the 100 gun HMS Victory, who was on her way to join Lord Nelson for the Trafalgar campaign.    Remarkably, the towering first rate ran down the Embruscade, and compelled her to surrender.   So the Embruscade was returned to British service and recommissioned as the Ambruscade.    This puts to lie the commonly held notion that Frigates were all swift while ships of the line were slow and lumbering.

In heavy weather, a heavy ship of the line can easily ran down any frigate.

Gerarddm wrote:

In one respect, the 'most' might be Renomenee ( sic. wish I could spell her name right ), captured by the Brits and so admired that didn't the English promptly clone a whole series of her? Very influential in terms of frigate design.

The French Hebe was the one whose design was most copied by the British.    HMS Shannon of the Cheaspeak vs Shannon fame was a Hebe clone.    Shannon's success against the Cheaspeake ensured that the Hebe design would continue to be copied by the British into the 1830s.

İn the light of your remarks and the ship names you gave, the trail of information led me to an extremely fascinating naval campaign that I was virtually ignorant about: war in indian ocean. Even the few essays that I found on the internet showed me a totally reversed view of the french navy; a naval force which is superbly led, well handled and well trained; which harassed and humiliated the mistress of oceans on several times. The remoteness and the exotic geography of that campaign made it even more fascinating to me. I think I will devote a greater attention to that little known yet very crucial campaign which had permanent effects on the strategic and economic picture of the 19th century.

Minor quibble:   Bayonnaise was a 24 gun corvette.   The HMS Ambruscade was a 32 gun frigate.   Bayonnaise did not really defeat the Ambruscade through superior handling.  She won mainly because she had a secret weapon aboard - a large detachment of infantry.  

Whoops! Sorry about that. I meant to enter 32gun for the A. Should not be reading a book, typing on the Net, and watching TV at the same time. Regarding ref to Const. or Pres., I meant highly successful frigates as their like not that heavy 24pdrs were not built by the Frenchies.

Equal force is a nonsensical term. How many single ship battles are actually between vessels of equal force? I cannot think of one. Crew quality is as important as physical attributes in a sailing ship with manhandled guns. I cannot think of one engagement and we are now too far removed from events to indicate so. All that matters is victory. Bayonnaise won. US heavy frigates won. British frigates won on numerous occasion against French, Spanish, Dutch, US,etc.  

I believe the French navy more than held its own against the British navy for a time, before the French revolution decimated its cadre of Naval officers (its best leaders were usually of noble birth, and we all know what happened to those kinds of people). It was this loss of naval leadership, combined with the lack of understanding of naval warfare and training requirements by one Napoleon Bonaparte, that led to the demise of the French as a naval power.

In my youth, I played a wonderful board game called "wooden ships & iron men". It was this game that sparked my interest in model ship building. The game allowed one to experience, among many things,some of the strengths and weaknesses of the French and British navies during the age of sail. In the game, the French ships were represented as generally structurally stronger (the French did, indeed, build better ships for a period of time in this era), and were crewed in much higher numbers than the British ships (a reflection of the constant struggle the British had in manning their immense fleet). However, the distinct advantage in the quality of the British crews (especially post-French revolution) usually gave the British side the upper hand in many of the scenarios. The game included scenarios for a series of battles from the historical campaign between the British and French in the Indian Ocean.

Come to think of it , I'd like recommendations for plastic models of French sailing warships. I'll peruse the forum for info, but recommendations here would be nice.

Jose Gonzales

You are quite right, there are very few models of the Britain's chief rival on the seas for most of the age of sail. Yet if I can recount those I can remember:

Ships of the line: Heller produces a fine 1/150 scale model of french revolutionary and napoleonic fleets' backbone, 74 gun Sané designed SoL. There are two versions of on the same hull and these two differ only in transom and figurehead. One, Glorieux, has a richly carved transom and a lion figurehead while the other, Superbe, has a plain undecorated transom and a royal coat of arms figurehead. I think Superbe is the better kit because nearly all 74s completed after revolution erupted had plain undecorated transoms as far as I know and they were distinguished by their figureheads. So, only by replacing the figurehead with that of an individual ship (you can try to carve it or maybe find a master carver) you can create any one of the 150+ ships of that class. apart from 74, there is a 1/200 120 gun SoL packaged as Royal Louis. As it's discussed in another thread recently, this is a very poor quality model. I compared it roughly with the museé de la marine photo of L'Océan, a Sané designed 120 and found them to be apparently -and superficially- similar; altough there is a great possibility that I'm wrong. Even if I'm not wrong, You shall be prepared for a major scratchbuilding (maybe up to % 60 of the ship) as the hull lacks coppering, some outer surface details are ultra-exaggerated and some main parts look to be wrongly shaped. My idea is that it shall be a waste of time and money but if you certainly want a french 3 decker, I don't know any other plastic kit.

For Frigates, Up to this year, only choice was Lindberg's "Jolly Roger", which is in fact the 30 gun 9 pounder armed french frigate La Vangeance of 1757 and after changing three flags (british, american, royal french again), ended her career as a privateer in the 1790s. This is one of the best plastic sailing ships ever produced and I highly recommend it. Zvezda announced that they will release the fictional french frigate L'Acheron from Master&Commander movie this year in 1/200 scale. I suspect they will do a revamping of Revell's 40 cm long USS Constitution hull (which is basically a good one),so altough somewhat inaccurate, this will be the only heavy french frigate kit on the market and shall be accepted as such.

It's truly a shame that there is not one model of a french privateering ship. They caused immense harm to british overseas trade and figures like Robert Surcouf became nautical legends. I'd wish there would be a model of at least one of Surcouf's ships, either La Confiance or Le Revenant. The brittany Luggers like Le Coureur were also well known corsairs. What a pity that no one tried to produce a model kit of them.

Celestino wrote:

Equal force is a nonsensical term. How many single ship battles are actually between vessels of equal force? I cannot think of one. Crew quality is as important as physical attributes in a sailing ship with manhandled guns. I cannot think of one engagement and we are now too far removed from events to indicate so. All that matters is victory. Bayonnaise won. US heavy frigates won. British frigates won on numerous occasion against French, Spanish, Dutch, US,etc.

Actually, single ship battles between vessels of nearly equal force occurs quite frequently during the age of sail.   Some examples involving major ships from the era of Napoleonic wars includes USS Chesapeake vs. HMS Shannon,  HMS Mars vs. Hercule,  HMS Quebec vs . Surveillante,  Bellone vs. Minerva,  HMS Phoebe vs. USS Essex, etc.  There are many more.     The number of encounters between evenly matched sloops and other smaller ships are even more numerous.    Perhaps it is the frequency of such evenly matched single ship combats during the heroic age of naval warfare that  tainted the naval perception and caused navies down through WWII to plan their construction program as if individual encounters between comparable ships were a still a possibility.
 
Victory is not all that mattered in the morality pervailing during that era.   For a British captain throughout the American war, French Revolutionary war and Napoleonic war, victory in a single ship combat over a notably inferior opponent would bring some prize money and gun money, but not much honor.    Certainly when a British Captain achieves a single ship victory similar to that of USS Constitution or president, where the winning ships enjoyed a nearly 50% advatnage in broadside weight of metal, it would not be considered a thing to be worth bragging about, or to be a thing that reflects honor upon the service as a whole.   In fact, he would likely face severe censured if he failed to win from a position of equality or even modest disadvantage.     For pre-revolutionary France, the same mentality would apply.  Only after the French Revolution, when the quality of the French Navy declined dramatically and any victory at all is hard to come by, that the French started to reward their captains for Victories over inferior enemy ships.   

jgonzales wrote:

I believe the French navy more than held its own against the British navy for a time, before the French revolution decimated its cadre of Naval officers (its best leaders were usually of noble birth, and we all know what happened to those kinds of people). It was this loss of naval leadership, combined with the lack of understanding of naval warfare and training requirements by one Napoleon Bonaparte, that led to the demise of the French as a naval power. In my youth, I played a wonderful board game called "wooden ships & iron men". It was this game that sparked my interest in model ship building. The game allowed one to experience, among many things,some of the strengths and weaknesses of the French and British navies during the age of sail. In the game, the French ships were represented as generally structurally stronger (the French did, indeed, build better ships for a period of time in this era), and were crewed in much higher numbers than the British ships (a reflection of the constant struggle the British had in manning their immense fleet). However, the distinct advantage in the quality of the British crews (especially post-French revolution) usually gave the British side the upper hand in many of the scenarios. The game included scenarios for a series of battles from the historical campaign between the British and French in the Indian Ocean. Come to think of it , I'd like recommendations for plastic models of French sailing warships. I'll peruse the forum for info, but recommendations here would be nice. Jose Gonzales

I agree with you about the technical excellence of the French fleet before the revolution.  

The size, power and performance of French ships during the 1770s and 1780s were second to none, the technical competence of its officer corps was at least the equal of the RN,  its navigation, seamenship and hydrography were also distinctly superior to RN.    French fleet were able tack closer to the wind, maintain better formation, and execute more complex menuvers then the British on many occassions.  Its corps of highly paid, expert seamen artillerist is without equal in the RN, giving the French Navy an unparallel reputation for superior long range gunnery.

However, the French navy of the ancient regime, although technically formidable,  also suffers from a chronic lack of aggression, and unwillingness to take decisive risks.    It tends to avoid battle whenever possible even if the odds were even, or slightly in its own favor.    If compelled to fight, the French tends to place the preservation of their fleet uppermost, and try to withdraw from the battle as soon as possible.   It tend to shoot at the enemy's sails to facilitate its own withdraw rather than shoot at the enemy's hulls to reduce the enemy's fighting power.

What is worse, its aristocratic officer corps, although technically highly competent, tends towards indiscipline and insubordination at the critical moment.   DeGrass was beaten by Rodney at the battle of the saints mainly because many of his captains choose to be insubordinate at the critical moment, and declined to tack their ships as commanded.    The social convention of the pre-revolutionary France apparently made it very difficult to punish an subordinate of same aristocratic rank as the superior officer.  

I disagree with your assessment that French ships were strucutrally stronger than the british ships.    French ships were larger, better designed, faster, more weatherly and more heavily armed than nominally comparable British ships.   But in general, the scantling of the french ships were lighter, and French ships captured by the British and pressed into british service generally showed considerably more structural problems than native British built ships.

One reason why the myth about the greater structural strength of French arose before the Napoleonic war was the way the French employed their ships.   The French tend to horde their ships in port and sortie them only for specific missions.    The British tends to keep their ships at sea as matter of policy. As a result, French ships are likely to arrive at the battle having been docked more recently, and in better state of repair than their british counterpart.    As a result, French ships tend to be in better structural condition when entering the battle.    During the Napoleonic war, when the british pressed captured French ships into the same style of service as their own, they rapidly found that the French ships could not stand up to prolonged duty at sea as well as british ships.    The myth of structual superiority of French ships were thus shattered.

 

No Chuck. Equal force also means crew capability when the battleworthiness of a ship depended on the seamanship of the crew and ability to operate the guns. That is why the RN would repeatedly defeat nominally larger adversaries in the post 1789 conflicts. If the USN manned their ships(and artillery) as the French did(or Spanish,and others) then the heavy 44s would not have been so successful. 

Shannon's Broke has been stated as training his crew extensively while Lawrence had a crew with a lesser degree of training.(

Phoebe and Essex involved other British ships. Besides, carronades vs. long 18s. Come on.

Mars/Hercule, 74s new vs trained crew.

Bellone/Minerve squadron action at anchor.

We have different opinions. I note your view of the US heavy 44s. Sounds as if you are W.James and I am Teddy R. I take it you are from the UK.

Completely disagree with you regarding the concept of Victory. Honorable defeat was acceptable as face saving. But Victory is all that matters.(to the RN) Calder was severely censured for not obtaining a thorough victory only a sufficient one.

Besides, we at a distance have far more intelligence of actual determinates of combat/victory than was available to contemporaries.(construction, crew training, weight of shot, comparison of hull lines,etc) I think we use our value system of Victory when judging operations, otherwise the French view of  avoiding combat would be viewed in a different attitude.

We are only discussing French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. French navy during the American Revolution was much more battle capable.

 

Here is a good link for operational history of RN sailing ships encompassing the period in question and a bit more +/-.

http://www.cronab.demon.co.uk/INTRO.HTM

 

 

Hi all,

This is a fascinating subject and a fantastic discussion. I, too, have the Wooden Ships & Iron Men board game.

In any event, I would like to learn more about the French Navy during the American Revolutionary War and Nepoleonic periods. I feel they've gotten short shrift compared to the British and American navies.

So, with that in mind, do you guys have any good references for the French Navy? I've read in several places that French ships were (for a time, anyway) better designed than British ships, but I've not found any references explaining how they were better designed.

Would scale models of a British and a French ship of the same type and from the same era show the differences well?

Regards,

I haven't done any formal research about the Napoleonic Wars, but I do know something about the American Revolution.  The most thorough study of the French navy during that conflict is The French Navy and American Independence, by Jonathan R. Dull.  Be warned:  it's pretty heavy going.  Dull is a diplomatic historian, not a naval historian; his introduction to the book leaves no room for doubt that he isn't much interested in ships and battles.  The same goes for Navies, Deterrence, and American Independence, by Nicholas Tracy.  Both those books are excellent within their respective spheres, but frankly don't have a lot to offer the model builder.

The basic compilation of primary source materials about the naval phase of the American Revolution is the series Naval Documents of the American Revolution, published by the U.S. Naval Historical Center in Washington.  It's a massive, fascinating project.  The documents in those books include everything from the private papers of government officials to newspapers to ships' logbook entries.  So far there are eleven volumes, each containing between 1,000 and 2,000 pages.  Each volume covers a period of about three months.  Quick arithmetic will show that the series is only now getting into the period of the war in which the French navy was actively involved.  (I just wrote a review of Vol. XI, which came out late last year.  It contains the treaty of alliance between the U.S. and France, from February, 1778.)  The frustrating thing about this series is that it's slowed down severely in recent years.  The first volume was published in 1964; between then and 1976 those big blue books were coming out at a rate of one every year or two.  Now they get published about once every decade.  (The prices have changed rather remarkably, too.  My copy of Vol. I has an official price of $9.00 printed on the copyright page.  Vol. XI sells for $82.00.)  At this rate, it's unlikely that the editors will reach the Battles of Yorktown and the Chesapeake within my lifetime. 

Good secondary sources about the French navy - especially in the English language - are less than numerous .  When it comes to the ships themselves, we're extremely fortunate in having a series of magnificent books by the naval historian and draftsman Jean Boudriot.  Over a period of about thirty years M. Boudriot wrote a series of books covering most of the major classes of French naval vessels, from ships-of-the-line to frigates to bomb ketches.  His first major work, Le Vaisseau de 74 Canons, consists of four enormous volumes, each illustrated with hundreds of wonderful pen-and-ink drawings.  That set of four books has been translated into English; I believe a few of M. Boudriot's other books have as well.  Any of those books contains enough information to scratchbuild a plank-on-frame model of the ship in question.  Unfortunately they're hard to find (especially in the U.S.) and very, VERY expensive.  I'm not sure whether any of them are actually in print at the moment.  Used copies can usually be found on line, but generally at pretty staggering prices.  I'm lucky in that the library of the university where I work has almost all the Boudriot works.  Forum members who live within driving distance of well-stocked libraries might find look for the Boudriot books there.  The Inter-Library Loan Service might also be able to help.

There's a need for several good, readable, book-length studies in English of the French navy during the sailing ship period.  I'm confident that such books would sell.  I wish I were competent to write them.

If I remember correctly (It’s been a long time since I’ve read it) Robert Albion in his book “Forests and Sea Power” argues that the French Navy suffered as much from dry rot as it did British guns. After the French were denied high volume access to North American timber, their fleets began to deteriorate.   

Osprey publishing recently issued a wonderful book named "French warship crews 1789-1805" with a secondary title "from revolution to trafalgar". This suggests that a second volume will follow. I looked to the contents and read a short extract in the publisher's webpage. It looks like a wonderful introduction to the subject.

http://www.ospreypublishing.com/title_detail.php/title=S745X~ser=WAR~per=47

Jean Boudriot's books are available through the website, below

 

http://www.ancre.fr/index-e.htm

 

 

 

Kapudan, Patrick O'Brian covers one aspect of the Indian Ocean war at sea in his Aubrey/Maturin series, in the volume The Mauritius Command. Although clearly he takes certain artistic liberties, his research is generally held to be impeccable.

Gerarddm wrote:

Kapudan, Patrick O'Brian covers one aspect of the Indian Ocean war at sea in his Aubrey/Maturin series, in the volume The Mauritius Command. Although clearly he takes certain artistic liberties, his research is generally held to be impeccable.

Patrick O'Brian also describe an earlier episold of Indian Ocean war in the book H.M.S Surprise, from the same series as Mauritius Command.  In this book he placed Jack Aubrey at the battle between French ADmiral Linois' French raiding force and Commodore Dance's East India Company convoy.   Commodore Dance formed the armed merchant ships of the East Indian company into a line of battle, and drove away a very heavy French commerce raiding squadron consisting one 74 gun ship of the line and 2 heavy frigates, supported by 2 sloops.    It was not one of the better moments even for the Napoleonic French Navy.

It is interest to note that Patrick O'brian professed a much higher opinion of Admiral Linois than most naval historians.   For reasons of plot he magnified the cunning and daring of Linois, so that Jack Aubrey's presence in the battle would not be superflous.  

Gerarddm wrote:

Kapudan, Patrick O'Brian covers one aspect of the Indian Ocean war at sea in his Aubrey/Maturin series, in the volume The Mauritius Command. Although clearly he takes certain artistic liberties, his research is generally held to be impeccable.

And here is a great link to a page explaining the actual history of that campaign. O'Brian really did get most things right:

http://www.wargamer.com/aos/mauritius-intro.asp

Regards,

Cannot think of an English language title which deals with the Napoleonic era French Navy. Quite a bit of information can be gleaned from Caxton Pictorial Histories multi-volume production of the naval war. Fairly inexpensive from a number of sellers.

Titles:

1.Fleet Battle & Blockade, 1793-1797

2.Nelson Against Napoleon, 1798-1801

3.Campaign of Trafalgar, 1802-1805

4.The Victory of Seapower, 1806-1814

5.Naval War of 1812

There was also on a volume on naval aspects of the Amercian Revolution. I think it was published by Conways.

There is a biography of Admiral Suffren entitled Admiral Satan. He operated much more successfully and dramatically than Admiral Linois in the Indian Ocean. Earlier war-American Revolution.

Seaman Garneray is a memoir of a sailor who served under Surcouf. Sort of the French version of Jack Nastyface. scholarsbookshelf.com has it quite inexpensive until supplies last.

Crowhurst, Patrick, French War on Trade.Privateering 1793-1815. OOP

If you wish to try in French language try Amazon.fr or chapitre.com or alapage.com and enter marine francaise or historie marine or historique marine and a number of titles do come up. Nice way to learn the language I think.

Stackpole books has republished William James Naval History of Great Britain During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. 6 volumes. Good view of the "other side of the hill" while memoirs and attitudes were fresh.

 

Celestino wrote:

There is a biography of Admiral Suffern entitled Admiral Satan. He operated much more successfully and dramatically than Admiral Linois in the Indian Ocean. Earlier war-American Revolution.

The daring and exploits of French "privateers" through much of 18th century is a topic generally overlooked in both popular history and fictionalized maritime history novels.     Throughout the 18th century, French privateers operated with great energy and considerable success during any Anglo-French conflict.  

It is well known that a large navy cost much more each year to operate than it did to build it.   A very major problem with the pre-revolutionary French Navy was the system of French state finances.  Although France was a rich country, its financial system was antiquated compared to the English system,  and the state can not raise nearly as much funds on credit during war as could England.    Combined with the need to maintain a large army, this frequently deprive France of the ability to fund the operation of the fleet, or even to keep the fleet in full readiness, during any war.      This more than any others was responsible for why pre-revolutionary France, despites the real competence and nominal strength of its navy, was so rarely able to seriously challenge British naval supremacy in time of war.

As a means of offsetting the problem of funding the navy at times of war, France adapted the practice of "hiring" out its naval ships during time of war to private syndicates willing to fund the ship's operating expenses in return for a portion of any prize.   The ship would retain its naval crew, and would generally be commanded by commissioned naval officers of either common birth, or of minor nobility, whose prospects would otherwise be bleak in the heavily aristocratic officer corps.

These French "privateer" ships were for all practical purposes naval vessels.