Magnanime (ship, 1865)
The Magnanime ( French : Magnanimous) was a French armored frigate of the Provence class. In the Franco-Prussian War she was the flagship of the North Sea Squadron ( Escadre de la mer du Nord ) under Vice Admiral Martin Fourichon .
Technical specifications
- Type of ship: tank frigate
- Typ ship: Provence
- Builder: Arsenal Brest
- Keel laid: January 27, 1861
- Launched: September 2, 1864
- Commissioning: November 1, 1865
- Size: 5900-6000 t
- Length: 80.72 m
- Width: 17.0 m
- Draft: 7.7–8.4 m
- Drive: steam engine , sails
- Power: 3050-3600 hp
- Speed: 13.0-14.5 kn
- Masts: 3
- Rigging: Bark
- Armor: 110–150 mm
- Armament: 8-24.0 cm guns , four 19.0 cm guns (as of 1870)
history
Nothing is known about the period of service of the Magnanime from its commissioning in November 1865 to the outbreak of the Franco-German War on July 19, 1870. Presumably at the end of July 1870 she became the flagship of the North Sea Squadron ( Escadre du Nord or Escadre de la mer du Nord ) of Vice Admiral Fourichon. The squadron left Brest on August 7 and arrived in the North Sea on August 9, where Fourichon declared the sea blockade on the north-west German coast on the same day .
On August 12, the squadron arrived off the then British island of Heligoland , whose waters served as the unit's nightly anchorage for the duration of the blockade. The Escadre consisted of eight ironclads and four Avisos and corvettes :
- Magnanime (flagship)
- Provence (sister ship, lead ship of the class)
- Héroïne (sister ship)
- Couronne (armored frigate)
- Atalante (armored corvette)
- Invincible (armored frigate)
- Valeureuse (armored frigate )
- Revenge (tank frigate)
- Decrés (Aviso)
- Cosmos (Aviso)
- Château Renaud (Aviso)
- Renard (Aviso)
Fourichon divided his squadron into two divisions. The first under Rear Admiral Devouix monitored the mouth of the Elbe , the second under Rear Admiral Jean Bernard Jauréguiberry the Weser and Jade estuaries . Fourichon stayed with the Magnanime and other units off Heligoland to prevent the German armored ships from leaving the Jade estuary or Wilhelmshaven . The strategic goal was the complete blockade of the north-west German coastal cities, especially Hamburg and Bremen , while the Baltic Sea Squadron with the flagship Surveillante was supposed to block the north-east German ports as far as Memel .
On August 18, 1870, the North German Lloyd steamer Schwalbe, rented by the North German Navy , appeared in front of Heligoland under the parliamentary flag . On board was Rear Admiral Wilhelm Prince of Hesse on behalf of the Governor General of the Coastal Lands in Hanover , General of the Infantry Vogel von Falckenstein . The prince asked Fourichon for an audience . However, he refused to visit the prince on his flagship, so that the swallow längseits the Magnanime went. Fourichon dispatched the sea captain Baron de Roussin and the adjutant Arago as negotiators to the swallow . Therefore, Falckenstein's letters had to be handed over personally to Baron Roussin instead of Fourichon. The conversation was in English as the prince refused to speak French. Since Falckenstein's letters were written in German, they had to be translated into French before they were handed over, as the squadron interpreter was on the Héroine in front of the Elbe estuary.
In the letter, Falckenstein asked Fourichon to stop the capture of German ships in view of the German victories in France , otherwise reprisals would take place on land and possibly higher war indemnities would be demanded. Fourichon, however, referred expressly to the Paris Declaration of the Law of the Sea of 1856, which was also signed by the Kingdom of Prussia and according to which cruiser warfare was legal. The swallow was asked to leave immediately. According to the French representation, the prince's diplomatic mission also served as espionage to establish the strength and anchorage of the squadron, which was vigorously rejected by the German side.
With increasingly bad weather and due to considerable supply difficulties, especially the supply of coal , Fourichon was forced to break off the blockade on September 9, 1870. Allegedly even some coal transporters had crashed, so probably sunk. The squadron arrived in Cherbourg on September 12th . There Fourichon received the news that the imperial government in Paris had been overthrown, the republic had been declared and he himself had been appointed Minister of the Navy .
As far as is known, the Magnanime did not take part in any other operations during the war. Nothing is known about her further service life. It was decommissioned on January 19, 1882 and is believed to have been scrapped .
Sister ships
Flandre , Héroïne , Provence .
literature
- The 1870 campaign in the North and Baltic Seas. From the French by René de Pont-Jest. With corrections and additions by a German naval officer. Along with a map of the jade, Weser and Elbe estuaries, Bremen (JG Heyse) 1871 . Digitized version of the Munich State Library.
- Wrigley Wilson: Ironclads in action. A scetch of naval warfare from 1855 to 1895 , 2 volumes, Boston, MASS (Little, Brown & Co.) 1896. Digitized volume 1 at archive.org
- Robert Gardiner: Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1860-1905 , Greenwich (Conways's) 1979.
- Clas Broder Hansen: Germany will become a sea power. The construction of the Imperial Navy 1867–1880 , Graefelfing before Munich 1991. ISBN 3-924896-23-2
- Geoffrey Wawro : The Franco-Prussian War. The German Conquest of France in 1870-1871 , Cambridge (Cambridge University Press) 2003. ISBN 0-521-58436-1
- Hans Otto Steinmetz: In the shadow of the army and big politics. A consideration of the deployment of the Prussian-German Navy in the war of 1870/71 , in: Marine-Rundschau , Volume 70, year 1973, pp. 212-229.
- Hans-Justus Kreker: The French Navy in the War of 1870/71 , in: Marine-Rundschau , Volume 70, year 1973, pp. 276–286,