French battleship Bayard (1880)

Bayard crossing the Suez Canal at Port Said while bringing the remains of Admiral Amédée Courbet back to France. Her spars are set diagonally, one mast perpendicular to another, as a sign of mourning.
History
France
Name:	Bayard
Namesake:	Pierre Terrail, seigneur de Bayard
Builder:	Brest. Plan by Sabattier and Lebelin de Dionne
Laid down:	19 September 1876
Launched:	27 March 1880
Commissioned:	November 1882 in Brest
In service:	May 1883
Fate:	Broken up in 1910
General characteristics
Class and type:	Bayard-class ironclad
Displacement:	6000 tonnes
Length:	81 m (266 ft)
Beam:	17.45 m (57.3 ft)
Draught:	7.75 m (25.4 ft)
Installed power:	4,500 shp (3,400 kW)
Propulsion:	2 compound steam engines with 3 boilers each 2 shafts
Sail plan:	3 masted, squared rig
Speed:	14.5 knots (26.9 km/h; 16.7 mph)
Range:	3,600 nmi (6,700 km; 4,100 mi)
Complement:	450
Armament:	4 × 240 mm modèle 1875 in single mount barbettes 6 × 140 mm in deck gun 1 × 164 mm gun in at the bow 6 × 65 mm (2.6 in)
Armour:	Belt: 180–250 mm (7–10 in) Turrets: 200 mm (8 in) Deck: 50 mm (2 in)

The French ironclad Bayard was an early stationary battleship of the French Navy, lead ship of her class. Bayard had a wooden hull and a full rigging, as well as a side armour and steam machinery.

Bayard was commissioned in May 1883 under the command of capitaine de vaisseau Parrayon as the flagship of Admiral Amédée Courbet, who had recently been appointed to the command of France's Trial division (division des essais), established in April 1883. On 31 May 1883, in the wake of the defeat and death of Commandant Henri Rivière in Tonkin (northern Vietnam) at the Battle of Paper Bridge, Courbet was placed in command of a newly created Tonkin Coasts naval division. In early June Courbet left for the Far East with the ironclads Bayard and Atalante and the cruiser Châteaurenault.

Bayard arrived in Along Bay on 10 July, and for the next eleven months served as flagship of the Tonkin Coasts naval division. In August 1883, in the Battle of Thuan An, she bombarded the coastal defences of Hué, receiving minor shot damage from the Vietnamese shore batteries. From October 1883 to June 1884, during the period of growing tension that preceded the outbreak of the Sino-French War (August 1884–April 1885), she took part in a French naval blockade of the coast of Tonkin. On 30 November 1883, in response to the threat of an imminent Vietnamese attack on the French post at Quang Yen, Bayard's landing company was hastily installed in the town's citadel, successfully deterring the threatened attack. In June 1884 Bayard became the flagship of the Far East Squadron, an exceptional naval grouping created for the war with China by the amalgamation of the Tonkin Coasts and Far East naval divisions.