Téméraire class ship of the line
| Class overview | |
|---|---|
| Name: | Téméraire |
| Builders: | Toulon, Rochefort, Brest, Lorient, Antwerp, Genoa, Amsterdam, Cherbourg, Flushing, Venice |
| Operators: | |
| Preceded by: | Centaure class |
| Succeeded by: | Tonnant class |
| Subclasses: |
|
| In commission: | 1782 (Téméraire)–1862 (Couronne) |
| Planned: | 120 |
| Completed: | 107 |
| Cancelled: | 13 |
| General characteristics | |
| Type: | Ship of the line |
| Displacement: | 1,900 tonnes |
| Length: | 55.87 metres (183.3 ft) (172 pied) |
| Beam: | 14.90 metres (48 ft 11 in) (44.5 pied) |
| Draught: | 7.26 metres (23.8 ft) (22 pied) |
| Propulsion: | Up to 2,485 m2 (26,750 sq ft) of sails |
| Complement: | 700 men |
| Armament: |
|
The Téméraire-class ships of the line were class of 120 74-gun ships of the line ordered between 1782 and 1813 for the French navy or its attached navies in dependent (French-occupied) territories. Although a few of these were cancelled, the type was and remains the most numerous class of capital ship ever built.
The class was designed by Jacques-Noël Sané as part of the fleet expansion programme instituted by Jean-Charles de Borda.
The design was appreciated in Britain, which eagerly commissioned captured ships and even copied the design with the Pompée and America class.
While all the French 74-gun ships from the mid-1780s until the close of the Napoleonic Wars were to the Téméraire design, there were three variants of the basic design which Sané developed with the same hull form of Téméraire. In 1793 two ships were laid down at Brest to an enlarged design; in 1801 two ships were commenced at Lorient with a slightly shorter length than the standard design (with a third ship commenced at Brest but never completed); and in 1803 two ships were commenced at Toulon to a smaller version (many more ships to this 'small(er) model' were then built in the shipyards controlled by France in Italy and the Netherlands) - these are detailed separately below.
Three further ships to this design were begun at Castellammare di Stabia for the "puppet" Neapolitan Navy of Joachim Murat:
Two ships were laid down in 1793-94 at Brest to a variant of Sané's design with the aim of carrying 24-pounder guns on the upper deck instead of the 18-pounders carried by the Téméraire. These ships were 2 feet longer than the standard 74s, and half a foot wider. The first was begun as the Lion, but was renamed Glorieux in 1795 and Cassard in 1798. The second was begun as the Magnanime, but was renamed Quatorze Juillet in 1798 and Vétéran in 1802. Unlike the main sequence, construction proceeded slowly. By 1816 the 24-pounders aboard these two ships had been replaced by 18-pounders, and no further ships to this variant design were produced, so indicating that it was not judged successful.
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Wikipedia