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| The Russian torpedo boat Poti, circa 1883. Poti was an export version of the principal French torpedo boat design of the early 1880s. (Scientific American, courtesy of Project Gutenberg) |
For previous installments, see Parts I, II, and III
The Admiralty’s Views
Despite their
high profile, the Jeune École remained a minority of French naval officers. The
vast majority of the officer corps remained in the traditionalist camp. Unlike
the Jeune École, the Admiralty possessed no spokespersons in its ranks
comparable to Aube and lacked any external advocate equivalent to Charmes. It
also lacked influence within the National Assembly on procurement matters.[i]
Arguably, the polarization of 1880s French domestic politics deprived the
Admiralty of credibility in the Assembly as well.
Most
traditionalists did not disapprove of torpedo boats or cruisers. Rather, they
disapproved of the Jeune École’s prescriptions for how those warships should (and
could) be used. The Admiralty largely believed torpedo boats were ideally
suited for coastal defense, particularly in narrow channels and the approaches
to ports. They also noted coal-fueled cruisers could not remain at sea as long
as the equivalent warships of sail. Coal-fueled cruisers needed to replenish at
least every 5,000 to 7,000 nautical miles, and the Admirals feared that large enemy
combatants could easily blockade coaling stations to starve the commerce
raiders of fuel. More coaling stations and cruisers were needed, argued the
traditionalists, in order for Aube’s vision to stand a chance in reality.[ii]
Admiral
Bourgois, President of the commission that originally recommended French Navy
adoption of the Whitehead, contended that Charmes’s dream of torpedo boats
devastating enemy merchant ships at night was a fallacy. No nighttime means of
identifying friend from foe existed, so unrestricted Guerre de Course would inevitably sink neutrals, enrage their
governments, and risk additional belligerents piling upon France. Admiral
Ernest du Pin de Saint-Andre, the developer of the port of Toulon’s torpedo
defenses, further noted that merchant ships could be armed with light
rapid-firing guns for defending against unsupported torpedo boats. Merchant
ships, Saint-Andre argued, could also institute zigzag maneuvers for torpedo
avoidance.[iii]
Nevertheless, these
arguments largely fell on deaf ears during the early-to-mid 1880s. It did not
practically matter that the traditionalists stood on strong experience-based
and technical ground. Without influential external advocates or effective
internal spokespersons, the Admiralty simply could not communicate its
positions in ways that counteracted the Jeune École’s ideological
attractiveness and apparent modernity in the eyes of the center-left majority
in the National Assembly or the general public. Nor is it clear the Admiralty
even understood the political importance of the battle for public opinion. In contrast,
Jeune École members went out of their way to help journalists and politicians
seeking economic naval budgetary and procurement policy reforms refine arguments
against the Admiralty.[iv]
French Naval Acquisition During the 1880s
Poor public
relations and lack of political influence were not the Admiralty’s only
intractable problems. Much like the rest of the then-developed world, the
French economy had been suffering since 1873
from a protracted recession. The near-collapse of the Paris Bourse in 1882 exacerbated
this by strangling
the availability of credit within the French economy. This was disastrous
for French Navy procurement plans as the Admiralty relied heavily on private
loans to sustain the annual naval budget. Whereas the budget was 217.2 million
Francs in 1883, two years later it had contracted by 45.6 million Francs.[v]
Part of the
Admiralty’s reason for resorting to private loans was its difficulty in
obtaining the National Assembly’s concurrence on shipbuilding programs. From
the early 1870s through the turn of the 20th Century, French shipbuilding
program proposals often stalled in the polarized legislature or received
inadequate budgetary support. By the early 1880s, the Admiralty rarely
consulted with the National Assembly when drafting proposals. The financial
crisis and the Jeune École’s rising political clout made this situation worse. Legislators
latched on to Charmes’s arguments that building a 20 million Franc battleship
was an exercise in waste compared to the frugality of scores of
high-performance 300 thousand Franc torpedo boats.[vi]
Between 1872 and 1890, the French Navy received only fourteen new battleships
and fourteen new armored coastal defense vessels. In contrast, it received 165
torpedo boats during this period.[vii] This
bias towards torpedo boat procurement largely resulted from Aube’s influence,
which grew further after his 1886 installation as Minister of the Marine by
political allies. Upon entering office, Aube froze battleship construction and
focused procurement efforts on torpedo boat and light cruiser development.[viii]
French torpedo
boats of the 1880s were mostly built by the Normand shipyard in Havre.[ix]
Normand’s boats, as exemplified by the Poti
design sold to Russia, featured all-steel hulls, a 92’ length, 11.8’ beam at
its widest point, displacement of 66 tons, a top speed of about 18 knots, and a
1,000 nautical mile endurance at 11 knots. Poti
carried four Whitehead torpedoes and two Hotchkiss 40-millimeter rapid-firing
guns.[x] In
addition to these torpilleurs d’ attaque,
Aube directed the construction of a prototype bateau-cannon named after his ally Charmes.[xi]
 |
| The Condor-class torpedo cruiser Vautour, circa 1890 (Courtesy Navypedia.org) |
The other major component of Aube’s shipbuilding vision, commerce-raiding cruisers, faired similarly well in the 1880s budget battles. Thirteen protected cruisers were laid down between 1885 and 1887. These cruisers ranged in displacement between 1,705 tons and 7,470 tons. Four 1,270 ton Condor torpedo cruisers were also built.[xii] During sea trials, Condor achieved a speed of 17.7 knots.[xiii] Calling these ships cruisers, however, was somewhat inaccurate. Some of the French protected cruisers lacked medium-caliber guns, and most relied on torpedoes and light-caliber self-defense guns for armament. Both the protected cruisers and the Condors were essentially torpedo boats scaled up in size for oceanic operations.[xiv]
The cruisers
also lacked sufficient endurance to support Aube’s Guerre de Course strategy. Just as the traditionalists had
observed, France lacked a global network of naval coaling stations.
Replenishing shipboard coal stocks meant calling in neutral ports, and nothing
could prevent news of French commerce raiders’ arrival from being telegraphed
by agents or others to France’s adversaries. This issue should have resulted in
cruiser design requirements for coal storage space comparable to that of a ship
of the line, but no such requirements change was made. Of the thirty-three
French light cruisers built for Guerre de
Course between 1880 and 1904, only two possessed adequate coal storage for
a prolonged campaign of attacking merchant ships and evading enemy hunters.[xv]
There were
other problems with the Jeune École’s procurement approach. Aube delegated
significant design authority to the shipyards without oversight, and lack of
government-directed coordination between yards resulted in construction of
multiple designs for each type of ship. This denied the French Navy efficiencies
of procurement scale as well as the opportunity to standardize training,
maintenance, and other aspects of lifecycle support for each ship type. The
French Navy of the late 1880s through the turn of the century consequently
became a credibility-deficient “Fleet of Samples” that would have been
hard-pressed to perform its core wartime missions.[xvi]
Tomorrow, the French Navy tests the Jeune École’s theories in fleet experiments, plus the Royal Navy's moves to offset the Jeune École threat.
The views expressed herein are solely those of the author
and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not reflect the official
positions of Systems Planning and Analysis, and to the author’s knowledge do
not reflect the policies or positions of the U.S. Department of Defense, any
U.S. armed service, or any other U.S. Government agency.
[i] Walser, 21.
[ii] Ibid, 23.
[iii] Ropp, 168-169.
[iv] See 1. Walser, 15; 2.
Ropp, 256.
[v] Ibid, 140.
[vi] Ibid, 4-5, 241.
[vii] Walser, 21.
[viii] Halpern, 40.
[ix] Soundhaus, 143.
[x] “The New Russian Topedo
Boat, the Poti.” Scientific American
Supplement Vol. XVI, No. 415 ( 15 December 2024), accessed 6/15/15, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/11344/11344-h/11344-h.htm#7
[xi] Halpern, 40-41.
[xii] Sondhaus, 142.
[xiii] “Small Boats Needed
Now.” New York Times, 14 September
1891: Pg. 2. Accessed 6/15/15 at http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9D05E4DB153AE533A25757C1A96F9C94609ED7CF
[xiv] Ropp, 129-130.
[xv] Halpern, 41-42.
[xvi] Ibid, 41.
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