Redoutable (1791)
Le Redoutable was a French ship of the line with 74 guns. She was one of several ships of the same name in the French Navy (see Redoutable ). From her went the fatal shot on the British Admiral Nelson in the sea battle of Trafalgar.
history
The ship was launched as a suffren in Brest on May 31, 1791 . The sailors of the squadron to which she was assigned mutinied against her commander, Rear Admiral Morard de Galles. After the mutiny was put down, the ship was renamed Redoutable in 1794 and a new crew was added.
As part of Admiral Bouvet's squadron, she operated in the Caribbean off Saint-Domingue and Guadeloupe in 1802 and 1803 .
On October 21, 1805, the Redoutable took part in the Battle of Trafalgar under Captain Lucas . When the opposing HMS Victory was in battle with the flagship Bucentaure and the French ship was already suffering severe damage, the Redoutable tried to push the Victory away. She got caught in a devastating broadside fire from the British Temeraire, which soon received support from another British ship. The Redoutable was no longer able to return fire effectively. Before that, however, one of their fusiliers had managed to climb the mizzen mast and let off a fatal shot at Admiral Horatio Nelson . But that did not change the fate of the Redoutable, which after the failure of more than 80 percent of its crew finally dropped the flag (of its 643 man crew 300 were dead and 222 were wounded at this time). The ship, taken as a prize by the British, sank on October 22nd during a storm. Captain Lucas survived and later received an award.
The ship
The Redoutable was a 74-gun ship of the line built according to a standard plan by the shipbuilding engineer Sané . The main artillery was distributed over two battery decks with additional light guns and carronades on the forecastle and half deck. The sails followed the international standard with three yard rigged masts, plus a mizzen on the mizzen mast.
Dimensions
- Length: 52.40 m
- Width: 13.02 m
- Draft: 6.70 m
- Displacement: 1630 t
Furnishing
- Crew: 550 men
- Armament:
- 28 × 36 pound guns
- 30 × 18 pound cannons
- 16 × 8 pound cannons
literature
- Riccardo Magrini: Ships. Neuer Kaiserverlag, Klagenfurt 2006, ISBN 3-7043-1422-6
- Manfred Beike : Kaleidoscope of the sea battles Vol. 1. Brandenburgisches Verlagshaus, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-327-00910-4
- Arnoldo Mondadori: Sailing Ships. Pabel Möwig Verlag, Rastatt 1991, ISBN 3-8118-8567-7