History of the French Navy
The Navy built a French empire, conquering the "Nouvelle-Guyenne" (now Acadia), "Nouvelle France" (now Canada), Tortuga, Martinique, Guadeloupe, several other islands in the Caribbean, the Bahamas, and Madagascar.
Under the impulsion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert's ambitious policy of ship building, the French Navy began to gain a magnificence matching the symbolism of the Louis XIV era, as well as an actual military significance.
During the War of the Grand Alliance, Admiral Tourville won a significant victory in the Battle of Beachy Head (1690, Bataille de Bévezier).
The crews were saved, but the lost fifteen ships of the line were not replaced and France did not seriously challenge the combined English and Dutch fleet for decades.
France turned to commerce-raiding rather than large fleet actions with great success under such captains as Jean Bart, Claude de Forbin and René Duguay-Trouin.
Following the disasters of the Seven Years' War, France was financially incapable of building up a fleet to challenge Britain's Royal Navy.
However, efforts were made, and by the time of Louis XV's death in 1774, the Marine Royale was somewhat larger than it had been in 1763, and, crucially, had replaced numerous old vessels with more effective modern designs.
The National Convention dissolved the Fleet Gunners Corps, which effectively put a halt to the training in gunnery, abysmally degrading the rate of fire and precision of batteries;[9] in addition, the French doctrine was to fire at the rigging of enemy ships to disable them; this doctrine could prove effective with highly trained crews, but was impractical with poorly trained gunners, and resulted in a number of instances where French ships did not manage to score a single hit on dangerously exposed British ships (as happened with the fight of the Ça Ira, or at the beginning of the Battle of Trafalgar).
By contrast, the Royal Navy doctrine was for their well-trained gunners to fire at the enemy's hull, a much easier target, to kill and maim the crew and gradually degrade firepower.
Efforts to make the navy into a powerful force under Napoleon were dashed by the death of Latouche Tréville in 1804, and the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, where the British all but annihilated a combined Franco-Spanish fleet.
During this period, explorer and naval officer Dumont d'Urville contributed to geography in Southern and Western Pacific, Australia, New Zealand, and Antarctica, and brought back previously unknown plants and animal species.
In a speech in 1852, Napoleon III famously proclaimed that "The Empire means peace" ("L'Empire, c'est la paix"), although he was determined to follow a strong foreign policy to extend France's power and glory.
Napoleon III's challenge to Russia's claims to influence in the Ottoman Empire led to France's successful participation in the Crimean War (March 1854–March 1856).
Derived from the traditions of privateer warfare, the Jeune École emphasised small, maneuverable craft such as torpedo boats and cruisers carrying shell-firing guns, and prematurely deemed the battleship obsolete.
French capital ships of this time were instantly identifiable by their small size (10,000 tons), huge spur rams, great height and pronounced tumble-home.
Often carrying only half the main armament of their British contemporaries, French battleships had armoured masts with electric elevators inside, outsized funnels, and elaborate davit systems to swing out boats from the narrow upper decks.
France's conceptual and technological edge proved attractive to the newly industrialising Japan, when the French engineer Émile Bertin was invited for four years to design a new fleet for the Imperial Japanese Navy, which led to her success in the First Sino-Japanese War in 1894.
In the Liberté class (completed 1907), French pre-dreadnought design finally caught up with U.S. and British standards; but 1907 also saw the debut of HMS Dreadnought, which made all the world's capital ships obsolete overnight.
With the alliance with Britain, France's naval assets were concentrated in the Mediterranean, largely to face off the Austro-Hungarian fleet in the Adriatic Sea.
Meanwhile, a large cruiser fleet was also built, seeing service in the Mediterranean, the Channel, and in France's imperial dominions in Indochina, Pacific Islands, West Africa, and the Caribbean.
[12] As heavier-than-air aircraft developed in the early 20th century, various navies began to take an interest in their potential use as scouts for their big gun warships.
At the outset of the war, the French Navy participated in a number of operations against the Axis powers, patrolling the Atlantic and bombarding Genoa.
Some vessels were in British-controlled ports in Britain or Egypt and these were either persuaded to re-join the Allies as Free French ships or were boarded and disarmed.
French naval authorities were divided on their response: Admiral Jean de Laborde, the commander of the Forces de Haute Mer (the High Seas Fleet) advocated sailing to attack the Allied invasion fleet while others, such as the Vichy Secretary of the Navy, Contre-Amiral Gabriel Auphan favoured joining the Allies.
The then-largest submarine in the world, the Surcouf, which had sought refuge in Portsmouth in June 1940 following the German invasion of France, made an effort to resist the boarding.
Most of these ships were surrendered to the FNFL (notably the submarine Surcouf), and other were leased by the British (like the corvette Aconit), constituting the embryo of a naval force.
When French Africa joined the Allies, important ships based in Dakar were obtained (notably the cruisers Suffren, Gloire, Montcalm, Georges Leygues, and the battleship Richelieu).
Captain Henri Honoré d'Estienne d'Orves attempted to unite the French Resistance, and became an inspiring symbol when he was arrested, tortured by the Gestapo and executed.
The FNFL also harboured technical innovators, like Captain Jacques Cousteau, who invented the modern aqua-lung, and Yves Rocard, who improved radar.
Newer strategic submarines of the SNLE-NG type have mostly replaced the elder SNLE, and a new nuclear ballistic missile is under test, due for 2008.
