THE "Sample" BATTLESHIPS. Volume 02: Jauréguiberry, Bouvet, Masséna and Henri IV

With this second volume, we study the last three battleships of the 1890 programme, Jauréguiberry, Bouvet and Masséna, as well as the "unclassifiable" Henri IV, a vessel that allowed the engineer Emile Bertin to design and realise several innovations including the double hull, advanced cellular compartmentation and the use of superimposed turrets.

Innovations that would radically alter the design of the major warships conceived in the 1910s and beyond. Three of these four vessels played an active part in the Great War from one end of the Mediterranean to the other. Even the Masséna wrote an innovative chapter: she was scuttled to serve as one of the breakwaters of the port of Seddul Bahr. The creation of this "artificial" harbour was the stroke of genius that allowed Franco-British forces to receive the supplies and reinforcements that enabled them to fight on the Gallipoli peninsula. The lesson was not lost, as the concept of an artificial harbour was revived in 1944 off the beaches of Normandy.

At the end of this work, a summary of the naval war in the Mediterranean, tables of silhouettes, paintwork, divisional assignments and funnel rings of the seven battleships studied, to which we have added their five contemporaries, Charlemagne, Gaulois, Saint Louis, Iéna and Suffren — since their careers are inseparable from those of the Brennus, Carnot, Charles Martel, Jauréguiberry, Bouvet, Masséna and Henri IV — will allow owners of photographs and postcards to date and locate them.