French ironclad floating battery Lave

(Redirected from French ironclad Lave) "Lave" redirects here. For other uses, see Lave (disambiguation).

History
Lave, one of the first ironclad floating batteries.
France
Namesake	Lava
Ordered	July 1854
Builder	Lorient, France
Cost	1.23 million French Francs
Laid down	20 August 1854
Launched	5 June 1855
Decommissioned	1871
Maiden voyage	6 August 1855
Fate	Scrapped in 1873
General characteristics
Class and type	Dévastation-class ironclad floating battery
Displacement	574 tonnes
Length	53.02 m (174.0 ft)
Beam	13.35 m (43.8 ft)
Draught	2.66 m (8 ft 9 in)
Propulsion	Sail (three-masted, 885 m²) single screw, Mazeline steam engine, 150 shp
Speed	4 knots (7.4 km/h; 4.6 mph)
Armament	1st battery: 16 × 50 + 2 × 12 cm 2nd battery: 2 × 24 + 6 × 19 + 3 × 16 cm
Armour	110mm iron plates (100mm over the batteries), plus 440mm oak planking.

Lave was an ironclad floating battery of the French Navy during the 19th century. She was part of the Dévastation class of floating batteries.

In the 1850s, the British and French navies deployed iron-armoured floating batteries as a supplement to the wooden steam battlefleet in the Crimean War. The role of the battery was to assist unarmoured mortar and gunboats bombarding shore fortifications. The French used three of their ironclad batteries (Lave, Tonnante, and Dévastation) in 1855 against the defences at the Battle of Kinburn (1855) on the Black Sea, where they were effective against Russian shore defences. They would later be used again during the Italian war in the Adriatic in 1859.

Ironclad floating battery of the *Dévastation* class, spending the winter in Crimea, winter of 1855–1856.

The ships were flat-bottomed, and commonly nicknamed "soapboxes". They were towed from France to Crimea to participate in the conflict. Lave was towed by the paddle frigate Magellan.

References

^ (in French) Classe Dévastation Archived 2007-09-05 at the Wayback Machine in Dossiers Marine

Bibliography

de Balincourt, Captain; Vincent-Bréchignac, Captain (1973). "French Floating Batteries". F.P.D.S. Newsletter. I (2). Akron, OH: F.P.D.S.: 13–20. OCLC 41554533.
Gardiner, Robert, ed. (1979). Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1860–1905. Greenwich: Conway Maritime Press. ISBN 0-8317-0302-4.

v t e French weapons of the 19th century
Small arms	Delvigne rifle (1826) Thouvenin Carabine à tige (1846) Lefaucheux M1858 revolver Minié rifle (1849) Tabatière rifle (1864) Chassepot rifle (1866) Gras rifle (1874) Lebel rifle (1886) Modèle 1892 revolver
Machine guns	Reffye mitrailleuse (1866) Hotchkiss "Canon-Revolver" (1872) Mitrailleuse Gatling modèle APX 1895 (1895) Mle 1897 Hotchkiss Machine gun (1897)
Cannons	Year XI system (1803) Paixhans gun (1823) Valée system (1828) Canon obusier de 12 (1853) La Hitte system (1858) Reffye 85 mm (1870) Reffye 75 mm (1873) Lahitolle 95 mm (1873) de Bange 80 mm (1877) de Bange 90 mm (1877) Canet 320 mm (1880) Canon de 75 (1897)
Warships	Steam battleship Napoléon (1850) Ironclad floating battery Lave (1854) Ironclad Gloire (1858) Mechanical powered submarine Plongeur (1863) Steel battleship Redoutable (1876) Armoured cruiser Dupuy de Lôme (1890) Electrical submarine Gymnote (1888)
Ammunition	Lepage fulminate (1807–10) Pauly-Prélat integrated cartridge (1808) Prélat percussion cap (1818) Lefaucheux cartridge (1836) Tamisier ball (1841) Minié ball (1847) 8 mm Lebel smokeless powder cartridge (1886)
Systems	Lepage percussion system (1807) Marié-Davy naval periscope (1854) De Bange breech obturator (1872) Du Temple high-circulation steam engine (1876) Krebs naval electric gyrocompass (1880) Smokeless powder Poudre B (1886)
Operational usage	Napoleonic Wars French Intervention in Spain French conquest of Algeria Crimean War Second Italian War of Independence French Intervention in Mexico French weapons in the American Civil War Franco-Prussian War Tonkin Campaign Sino-French War

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