Alma-class ironclad
Model of Jeanne d'Arc on display at the Musée de la Marine in Paris, before the rear barbettes were deleted.
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| Class overview | |
|---|---|
| Name: | Alma class |
| Operators: |
 French Navy
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| Preceded by: | Belliqueuse |
| Succeeded by: | La Galissonnière class |
| Built: | 1865–1870 |
| In service: | 1867–1891 |
| Completed: | 7 |
| Scrapped: | 7 |
| General characteristics | |
| Type: | Ironclad corvette |
| Displacement: | 3,569–3,889 metric tons (3,513–3,828 long tons) |
| Length: | 68.75–69.03 m (225.6–226.5 ft) |
| Beam: | 13.94–14.13 m (45.7–46.4 ft) |
| Draft: | 6.26–6.66 m (20.5–21.9 ft) (mean) |
| Installed power: | 1,585–1,896 indicated horsepower (1,182–1,414 kW) |
| Propulsion: | 1 shaft, 1 steam engine, 4 boilers |
| Sail plan: | Barque-rig |
| Speed: | 11 knots (20 km/h; 13 mph) |
| Range: | 1,310–1,620 nautical miles (2,430–3,000 km; 1,510–1,860 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph) |
| Complement: | 316 |
| Armament: |
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| Armor: | |
The Alma-class ironclads were a group of seven wooden-hulled, armored corvettes built for the French Navy in the mid to late 1860s. Three of the ships attempted to blockade Prussian ports in the Baltic Sea in 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War. Three others patrolled the North Sea and the Atlantic, while the last ship was en route to Japan when the war began and blockaded two small Prussian ships in a Japanese harbor. Afterwards they alternated periods of reserve and active commissions, many of them abroad. Three of the ships participated in the French occupation of Tunisia in 1881 while another helped to intimidate the Vietnamese Government into accepting status as a French protectorate and played a small role in the Sino-French War of 1884–85.
The Alma-class ironclads were designed by Henri Dupuy de Lôme as improved versions of the armored corvette Belliqueuse suitable for foreign deployments. Unlike their predecessor the ships were true central battery ironclads as they were fitted with armored transverse bulkheads. The original plan for these ships was to have a two-deck battery with four 194-millimeter (7.6 in) guns on the battery deck and four 164-millimeter (6.5 in) guns mounted above them on the upper deck, one gun at each corner of the battery. This design was changed to substitute four barbettes for the upper battery, but the addition of armored bulkheads proved to be very heavy and the rear pair of barbettes had to be deleted to save weight. In partial compensation the 164-millimeter guns in the remaining forward barbettes were replaced by an additional pair of 194-millimeter guns. Like most ironclads of their era they were equipped with a metal-reinforced ram.
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Wikipedia