Monday, 13 August 2018

French Ironclads for Broadside and Ram


There's a pretty comprehensive list for the French in the Broadside and Ram supplement for the Franco Prussian War, as you would expect. However, one class that isn't included is the Cerbere ironclad ram, four of which were launched in the late 1860's and early 1870's as a follow on from the experimental Taureau class ram. 

They were built with wooden hulls sheathed in 7-8'' of armour and with a turret mounting two 9.4'' or 24cm M1864 -1866 rifled breech loaders, in addition to a ten foot long ram. I have found one source that says the turrets were fixed to fire forwards but at least two others that clearly indicate that they were able to be trained, which seems much more likely:

'The vessels are all revolving turret vessels, with the exception of the Taureau, which fires the gun 'en luhette'    
Modern Ships of War (1888) Sir Edward Reed MP

I think that's definitely a revolving turret

A bit difficult to tell from the photo though?

There were four ships in the class including Cerbere (1870), Belier (1870), Bouledouge (1872) and Tigre (1871). The Belier could make 12 knots but I suspect that was on a good day and they would normally be less nippy. There's a lovely model in the Tumbling Dice 1/2400th scale range, of which I have no fewer than three (!), so I thought it was a good idea to work out the vital statistics:

Type       CS         MS           AF          DF          Points

AS           3             4             3T          5                 11

The DF has been bumped back down to 5 rather than 6 due to the wooden construction, which was a weakness in the design and according to at least one source, would have meant that any ramming attack would probably have damaged the Cerbere more than the actual target ! (I've also amended the DF for the Taureau). The numbers closely match the other ironclad rams in the rules including the Dutch Buffel, which was designed at around the same time for the same purpose.

2 comments:

  1. That's a revolving turret. The class looks something like an upgraded version of the Confederate ironclad ram Manassas.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think the idea was pretty much the same and there was clearly some sort of connection in the design stages.

    ReplyDelete

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