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History's Hinge - 'Ain Jalut

[Solomon]

It also happened that one of her sister ships, the Concorde, had been captured by the Royal Navy in February 1783. Prior to commissioning the Concorde into RN service as a 5th rate frigate they proceeded to measure the vessel in fine detail.
A long and fine tradition of the Royal Navy!

[Diving Doc]

I have been told that there are in excess of 900,000 plans of ships on file in the archives in the UK. This seems quite large but that is what I was told. I have seen thousands at the Caird library in Greenwich.

What a stroke of luck it was to have all the data at hand to rebuild this famous ship.

Doc

[Diving Doc]

Let me continue with the story of the Hermione

The original frigate Hermione was built at Rochefort in 1748 . She was an experiment and the forerunner of all the 12-pounder frigates launched in the 18th century.  Now the Hermione under consideration for reproduction was the second ship of that name. She was number five of the six ships in her class. Her hull was built in the remarkably short time of six months, far ahead of the work on the reproduction. She was launched in April 1779  and put to sea on May 21, 1779 under the command of M. Levassor de La Touche.
This vessel was very much involved in the war between Britain and the American colonists. France had made an alliance with the United States and declared war on England and on 20 March 1780. The Marquis de La Fayette  had been made a  Major General of the American Army and  sailed over on the Hermione. On July of the same year French regiments landed at Newport to fight as allies of the Americans.

After the troops had been disembarked the Hermione went on and engaged in battle, on June 7, with an English frigate, the Iris and her escort. There was a reception on board the Hermione for the American Congress on 4 May 1781 for an official announcement of the victory of Chesapeake on March 16, 1781. Just a couple of months later she took part in a battle against six English vessels at Louisbourg and fired 509 cannonballs.

The Hermione returned to Rochefort on February 25, 1782. French seapower had played a crucial role, including the surrender of the British Army at Yorktown in 1871.

Doc

[Solomon]

L'Hermione


The Frigate
Navire de guerre du XVIIIe si?cle
Photo prise sur le chantier de l'Hermione ? Rochefort





Doc - I've changed the images for the better.

Solomon

[Diving Doc]

Solomon,
thanks for the pictures. Unless my eyes deceive me the original Hermione was a single battery. I'll have to do a little looking as soon as I get some time. Here's a nice link on the ship, she does now appear to have been a single battery frigate.
 http://hermione.free.fr/english/summary.html
Cheers,
Doc

[Diving Doc]

Here's a nice painting from the seventeenth C. that shows how radically different the frigate type was from her predecessors

[Diving Doc]

Shipbuilding in Charente-Maritime

Shipbuilding has played an important role in the history of Charente-Maritime.
Shipyards and boatyards, both large and small, grew up along the coast of the old provinces of Saintonge and Aunis and on the banks of the river Charente for building ocean-going ships, coasters and river barges.

The major part of the shipbuilding activity was concentrated in Rochefort-sur-Mer from the middle of the 17th century.

The Hermione.
   

By 1780, the Naval shipyard was building ships up to 900 to 1,000 register tons.
Colbert (1619-1683), advisor to Louis XIV, decided to build the Rochefort Arsenal in 1666, a magnificent building which soon aroused great admiration. In 1688, Michel B?gon was appointed Intendant of the Ponant Fleet in Rochefort. He wrote that the Arsenal was:

"the largest, the most complete and the most impressive in the Kingdom: it has the best shipbuilding yard in the world, three large docks for careening ships, all the general and special warehousing required, rope works, forges, and other workshops. It has one of the best armouries in the kingdom. [..] There are three powder magazines for storing the gunpowder from the factory in Saint-Jean-d'Ang?ly which makes gunpowder only for Rochefort."

Michel B?gon

was appointed the first Intendant of the new Grand Fleet of La Rochelle in 1694.
   

   

The Arsenal was very important for the economy. Constructing, arming and provisioning large fleets required an ever increasing amount of supplies. These supplies were sent to the new town of Rochefort from all over France and from abroad. To build just one 74 gun ship needed 4,000 oak trees, 17,124 aunes* of canvas for the sails and 1,480 aunes of cloth for the flags, the bunting and the pennants.                                                 

* an aune is 1.2 metres - more than 20 km (13 miles) of sailcloth.



Wood, canvas and victuals
The old provinces of Aunis and Saintonge, which are now part of Charente Maritime, supplied some of the wood needed for building the ships. Saintonge was a rich land, able to supply the Arsenal with wheat, meat and wine. Its agricultural resources were an important factor in the choice of the site for the Arsenal.

[Mariner]

Doc, et al.,

This thread gave me some very good memories of a visit to Rochefort and La Rochelle about two years ago, when I visited the rope works and the Hermione.  If my memory serves me correctly, was this not the ship that Lafayette used to travel to the United States, where he got involved in some kind of minor disturbance in which insurgents overthrew their legitimate government?  They called it the American Revolution.

Mariner

[Mariner]

Doc,

Sorry !! I had missed your mention of the La Fayette connection in an earlier post.

Incidentally, quite close to Rochefort is a small walled port where a French lady exiled herself after suffering great disappointment in a love connection.  She did it to punish herself, and claimed that this small town was the most boring place in France.  My daughter-in-law, who made the trip with us, remarked that she had obviously not visited the rope factory!  One man's meat etc.

Best wishes,

Mariner

[Bart]

La Rochelle

   La Rochelle is a city and commune of western France, and a seaport on the Atlantic Ocean (population 78,000 in 2004). It is the pr?fecture (capital) of the Charente-Maritime d?partement(17). The city is connected to the ?le de R? (island) by a 2.9 km bridge, completed in 1988. Its harbour opens into a protected strait, the Pertuis d'Antioche.



   The area of La Rochelle was occupied in Antiquity by the Gaul tribe of the Santones, who gave their name to the nearby region of Saintonge and the city of Saintes. The Romans then occupied the area, where they developed salt production along the coast as well as wine production, which was then reexported throughout the Empire.

Foundation

   La Rochelle was founded during the 10th century, and became an important harbour from the 12th century. In 1137, Guillaume X, Duke of Aquitaine essentially made La Rochelle a free port and gave it the right to establish itself as a commune. Fifty years later Eleanor of Aquitaine upheld the communal charter promulgated by her father, and for the first time in France, a city mayor was named for La Rochelle, Guillaume de Montmirail. Guillaume was assisted in his responsibilities by 24 municipal magistrates, and 75 notables who had jurisdiction over the inhabitants. Under the communal charter, the city obtained many privileges, such as the right to mint its own coins, and to operate some businesses free of royal taxes, dispositions which would favour the development of the entrepreuneurial middle-class (bourgeoisie).

   The main activities of the city were in the areas of maritime commerce and trade, especially with England, the Netherlands and Spain. In 1196, wealthy bourgeois named Alexandre Auffredi sent a fleet of seven ships to Africa to tap the riches of the continent. He went bankrupt and went into poverty as he waited for the return of his ships, but they finally returned seven years later filled with riches.

   Until the 15th century, La Rochelle was to be the largest French harbour on the Atlantic coast, dealing mainly in wine and salt.

Hundred Years War

   The naval Battle of La Rochelle took place on 22 June 1372 during the Hundred Years War between a Castilian-French and an English fleet. The Spanish had 60 ships and the English 40. They also had more knights and men than the English. The French and Castillians decisively defeated the English, securing French control of the Channel for the first time since the Battle of Sluys in 1340.

Sieges of La Rochelle

     Cardinal Richelieu at the Siege of La Rochelle

Second World War

     The La Rochelle submarine base (still standing) was used as a set for the movie Das Boot

   During the Second World War, Germany established a submarine naval base at La Pallice (the main port of La Rochelle), which became the setting for the movie Das Boot. The U-Boat scenes in the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark were also shot in La Rochelle.

   A German stronghold, La Rochelle was the last French city to be freed at the end of the War. A siege took place between September 12th, 1944, and May 7th, 1945, in which the stronghold, including the islands of R? and Ol?ron, was held by 20,000 German troops under a German vice-admiral. Following negotiations by the French Navy frigate captain Meyer, and the general German capitulation on May 7th, French troops entered La Rochelle on May 8th.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Rochelle