French cruiser Jurien de la Gravière
Jurien de la Gravière was the last protected cruiser built for the French Navy, named in honour of Edmond Jurien de la Gravière and his father, Pierre Roch Jurien de La Gravière.
Design
General characteristics and machinery
Jurien de la Gravière was long overall, with a beam of and a draft of. She displaced. Steering was controlled by a single rudder. She handled poorly and her turning radius was ; this was a result of the ship's large length to beam ratio. Her length allowed the designers to incorporate very fine lines for greater hydrodynamic efficiency, but rendered her significantly less maneuverable compared to foreign contemporaries like the British cruiser. Her crew numbered 463 officers and enlisted men.Her hull had a long forecastle deck that extended almost her entire length, stepping down to a quarterdeck toward her stern. The hull was sheathed in wood and a layer of copper plating to protect it on lengthy cruises overseas, where shipyard facilities would be limited. The ship was fitted with a pair of light pole masts for observation and signalling purposes. Her superstructure was fairly minimal, consisting of a conning tower and bridge structure forward and a smaller, secondary conning position aft.
The ship's propulsion system consisted of three vertical triple-expansion steam engines driving three screw propellers. Each engine was placed in individual engine rooms. Steam was provided by twenty-four coal-burning, Guyot-du Temple-type water-tube boilers. These were ducted into four funnels that were placed in widely spaced pairs, one set directly aft of the fore mast and the other pair further aft. Her machinery was rated to produce for a top speed of. Her propulsion system suffered from several problems, including cramped engine rooms and excessive vibration at high speed. Coal storage amounted to. Her cruising range was to have been at a speed of.
Armament and armor
Jurien de la Gravière was armed with a main battery of eight M1893 45-caliber quick-firing gun in single pivot mounts. Two of the guns were in shielded pivot mounts on the upper deck, both on the centerline, one forward and one aft. The other six were in sponsons in the upper deck, three guns per broadside. The guns fired a variety of shells, including solid cast iron projectiles, and explosive armor-piercing and semi-armor-piercing shells. The muzzle velocity ranged from.For defense against torpedo boats, she carried a secondary battery of ten 3-pounder Hotchkiss guns and six 1-pounder guns. All of these guns were carried in individual pivot mounts in various positions along the ship's upper deck and superstructure. She carried a pair of torpedo tubes; according to Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships, these were submerged in the hull. But the contemporary Journal of the American Society of Naval Engineers states that the tubes were mounted in the hull above the waterline. The torpedoes were the M1892 variant, which carried a warhead and had a range of at a speed of.
The ship had a curved armor deck that was thick on the flat portion, directly above the ship's propulsion machinery spaces and ammunition magazines. Toward the sides of the hull, it sloped downward to provide a measure of vertical protection, terminating at the side of the hull. The sloped portion increased slightly in thickness to, though toward the bow and stern, it was reduced to. Above the armor deck was a cofferdam that was wide and was composed of numerous watertight compartments. An anti-splinter deck that was thick formed the roof of the cofferdam, and the entire structure was intended to contain flooding in the event of damage. The forward conning tower was protected by on the sides. The ship's main guns were each fitted with gun shields that were thick, and their ammunition hoists were protected by armored tubes of 25 mm thick steel.
Service
Work began on Jurien de la Gravière with her keel laying in November 1897 in Lorient. She was launched on 26 July 1899, and after completing fitting-out, began her sea trials before formal acceptance by the French Navy. The trials were interrupted in July 1902 by an accident with her propulsion system. The ship was commissioned in March 1903 for service on the North Atlantic station, but she had to return to port due to problems with her propulsion system. She departed Lorient on 23 July, initially bound for the West Indies, but after a day at sea, she was forced to return to port. Her boiler rooms had become dangerously hot, ranging in temperature from, her boiler tubes leaked continuously, and she was unable to keep to her intended speed. In that condition, her cruising radius was less than half of what had been intended, around. Work on the ship was completed in 1903. At this time, the ship was painted the standard color scheme of the French fleet; green below the waterline, a black upper hull, and buff superstructure.Upon entering service in 1903, Jurien de la Gravière was assigned to the Atlantic Naval Division, along with the armored cruiser ; she replaced the protected cruiser The ship departed Lorient on 24 July, bound for the West Indies, where she joined the rest of the unit. In December, Jurien de la Gravière was sent to the United States to represent France during the centennial celebration of the Louisiana transfer from France to the United States. She was present for the three-day festivities that began on 18 December. The Spanish cruiser and the US cruiser and and the gunboat joined her for the celebration. By 1904, she had been assigned to the Atlantic Division with the armored cruiser and the protected cruisers and. She remained in the unit the following year. While visiting the United States on 10 July 1906, Jurien de la Gravière collided with the American 130-gross register ton schooner Eaglet in the North River between New York City and New Jersey. Eaglet was lost, but all four people aboard her survived.
In 1908, the French Navy adopted a new paint scheme that retained the green bottom hull, but replaced the above-water colors with a uniform blue-gray. By 1911, Jurien de la Gravière had been assigned to the Reserve Division of the Mediterranean Fleet, based in Toulon. The unit initially also included the armored cruisers and and the protected cruiser, and later that year, it was strengthened with the addition of the armored cruiser. She remained in the unit the following year, and was activated to take part in the annual fleet maneuvers that began on 17 July and lasted for a week.
In 1913, Jurien de la Gravière was activated to join the active component of the Mediterranean Fleet. She sailed on 20 October in company with the battleships of the 1st Squadron and six torpedo boats to make a show of force during a period of tension between Italy and the Ottoman Empire. The French ships visited Alexandretta, Egypt, where they were visited by thousands of people. They then steamed north past Cyprus on 3 November, then back west to Messina, Italy two days later. On the way there, they met the German battlecruiser. The fleet then returned to the eastern Mediterranean, visiting a series of ports in Ottoman Syria. The ships then steamed to the Dardanelles straits, where the commander, Admiral Augustin Boué de Lapeyrère, transferred from his flagship, the pre-dreadnought, to Jurien de la Gravière, to enter the straits and make an official visit to the Ottoman capital, Constantinople. The fleet then sailed to Salamis, Greece, to meet King Constantine I of Greece aboard his fleet's flagship, the armored cruiser on 28 November. After a week visiting other Greek ports, the French vessels stopped in Porto-Vecchio in Corsica before rejoining the rest of the Mediterranean Fleet at Porquerolles. They arrived back in Toulon finally on 20 December.
On 1 August 1914, Jurien de la Gravière departed from Toulon in company with the 2nd Submarine Flotilla, bound for Bizerte. By that time, Europe had already begun to spiral into World War I following the July Crisis that resulted in Austria-Hungary's declaration of war on Serbia over the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in late June. Boué de Lapeyrère ordered the fleet to mobilize the following day and steam to the North African coast to cover the transport of French units in French North Africa to mainland France. Boué de Lapeyrère received word of the start of hostilities with Germany in the early hours of 4 August.
World War I
1914–1915
Faced with the prospect that the German Mediterranean Division—centered on Goeben—might attack the troopships carrying the French Army in North Africa to metropolitan France, the French fleet was tasked with providing heavy escort to the convoys. But instead of attacking the convoys, Goeben bombarded Bône and Philippeville and then fled east to the Ottoman Empire. Jurien de la Gravière was sent with the armored cruisers,, and to patrol the Strait of Sicily on 7 August to free British forces to pursue Goeben and the light cruiser as they sailed eastward. After completing this mission, the Mediterranean Fleet then turned to confront the fleet of Germany's ally, the Austro-Hungarians, in the Adriatic Sea after France and the United Kingdom declared war on that country on 12 August.The French fleet was therefore sent to the southern Adriatic Sea to contain the Austro-Hungarian Navy. At that time, Jurien de la Gravière was attached to the Dreadnought Division, which at that time only included the new dreadnought battleships and. On 15 August, the two squadrons arrived off the Strait of Otranto, where they met the patrolling British cruisers and north of Othonoi. Boué de Lapeyrère then took the fleet into the Adriatic in an attempt to force a battle with the Austro-Hungarian fleet; the following morning, the British and French cruisers spotted vessels in the distance that, on closing with them, turned out to be the protected cruiser and the torpedo boat, which were trying to blockade the coast of Montenegro. In the ensuing Battle of Antivari, Boué de Lapeyrère initially ordered his battleships to fire warning shots, but this caused confusion among the fleet's gunners that allowed Ulan to escape. Jurien de la Gravière and several torpedo boats were detached to pursue Ulan, but they were unable to catch her. The slower Zenta attempted to evade the French battleships, but she quickly received several hits that disabled her engines and set her on fire. She sank shortly thereafter and the Anglo-French fleet withdrew.
Jurien de la Gravière continued to operate with the main fleet after it enacted a blockade of the southern end of the Adriatic. On 18–19 September, the fleet made another incursion into the Adriatic, steaming as far north as the island of Lissa. The fleet continued these operations in October and November, including a sweep off the coast of Montenegro to cover a group of merchant vessels replenishing their coal there. Throughout this period, the battleships rotated through Malta or Toulon for periodic maintenance; Corfu became the primary naval base in the area.
The patrols continued through late December, when an Austro-Hungarian U-boat torpedoed Jean Bart, leading to the decision by the French naval command to withdraw the main battle fleet from direct operations in the Adriatic. For the rest of the month, the fleet remained at Navarino Bay. The battle fleet thereafter occupied itself with patrols between Kythira and Crete; these sweeps continued until 7 May. Following the Italian entry into the war on the side of France, the French fleet handed control of the Adriatic operations to the Italian Regia Marina and withdrew its fleet to Malta and Bizerte, the latter becoming the main fleet base.
1916–1918
In October 1916, Jurien de la Gravière served as Boué de Lapeyrère's flagship during a bombardment operation on the southern Anatolian coast of the Ottoman Empire. The Greek government had remained neutral thus far in the conflict, since Constantine I's wife Sophie was the sister of the German Kaiser Wilhelm II. The French and British were growing increasingly frustrated by Constantine's refusal to enter the war, and sent the significant elements of the Mediterranean Fleet to try to influence events in the country. In August, a pro-Allied group launched a coup against the monarchy in the Noemvriana, which the Allies sought to support. Several French ships sent men ashore in Athens on 1 December to support the coup, but they were quickly defeated by the royalist Greek Army. In response, the British and French fleet imposed a blockade of the royalist-controlled parts of the country. Jurien de la Gravière was among the vessels sent to enforce the blockade. By June 1917, Constantine had been forced to abdicate.The French fleet, which had by then been relocated to a large anchorage at Corfu, remained largely immobilized due to shortages of coal, preventing training until late September 1918. In late October, members of the Central Powers began signing armistices with the British and French, signaling the end of the war.