The Franco Prussian War at Sea - Turns out Coal and Men are important

[Music] the franco-prussian war was to be fair mostly a land war which is perhaps unsurprising as one of the main aims of a navy to stop an enemy's army marching onto your home soil is admittedly somewhat difficult to achieve when you happen to share a direct land border with the people that you happen to be fighting nonetheless in this particular conflict also meant a large amount of either sides coastline was within pretty easy reach of the other so trade interdiction troop landings and shore bombardments might reasonably seem to be one of the cards at least for one side that could be played well at least on paper in terms of that on paper strength it seemed like the naval war would be a one-sided walkover navies of the early 1870s measured their core strength in ironclads and unless the navy was very small the ratio of other ships such as older wooden ships of the line unarmored frigates corvettes and various other small craft would usually be somewhat proportional to the relative number of ironclads thus when you look at the fleet listings the french possessed the glo invincible normandy quran magenta solferino provence heroine flandre savoir magnanime serverliente alma amide atlante jean dark moncalm reimbursed thetis osho and roshambo 26 ocean-going ironclads in all plus 16 armored floating batteries and two armored coastal defense ships by contrast the fleet of the north german confederation which was for most purposes the old prussian fleet just with a new shiny flag had a grand total of five armored vessels of which two were quite small relatively slow and hadn't actually been originally built for the prussian navy two were midsize and they had one top-end warship that was also not originally intended to fly that particular flag these were respectively sms arminius a small coastal defense turret ship whose four and a half inches of armor probably wouldn't help against the latest french guns and whose main defenses therefore consisted of being of quite small size and having a fairly shallow draft which would allow her to operate in waters where larger ocean-going vessels couldn't follow she'd been built privately in britain as a speculative project and was in many ways similar to the danish vessel rolf kraka even smaller was the armored ram sms prince adelbert originally built in france for the confederate states navy the collapse of that entity had left her open for purchase by the prussians of all the prussian ships she was perhaps the least useful whilst theoretically somewhat agile she was by this point relatively slow relatively lightly armed and as it turned out her construction had been pretty poor and she didn't handle rough seas at all well by contrast the sms friedrich carl although also built in france had actually been ordered from the start by the prussians in response to the danish naval blockade in the second schleswig war which had been the driving force behind most all of the prussian ironclad acquisition program along with the sms crown prince ordered at the same time from the uk for comparative purposes they represented decent mid-sized ironclad warships although unlikely to match the latest and greatest that france could offer they should be able to stand against most of the french ironclad line in a 1v1 duel if the marine national would be so kindest to actually offer such a conflict the last ironclad was the sms koenig wilhelm at around 10 000 ton displacement with a speed of around 14 knots almost two dozen heavy guns and 12 inches of belt armor she was regarded in some quarters as the most powerful warship in the world albeit that at this point in history this was an accolade that tended to switch over about every year or so but she could comfortably go toe-to-toe with pretty much anything the french might have albeit there was only one of her and she had originally been built for the ottoman empire before they defaulted on payments and the prussians had stepped in almost every gun in the german fleet had been replaced with crop made weapons so the types of guns and ammunition was actually fairly uniform throughout the fleet and thus also not dependent on overseas goodwill so it would seem the naval war should be short exciting and pretty violent but it could only possibly end one way this however did run into just a small problem the marine national had planned for war with many countries the amount that had been written internally on how to fight war with the british empire probably added up to enough to provide meaningful additional armor for the ironclad fleet if you happen to stack all the papers together and planning for war with other major european navies was also pretty extensive but planning for a naval war with the recently formed german state which itself had been a naval power of such little note you'd have to look in the appendix of any serious naval guide to find it up until a few years ago when it had graduated to the back pages was sparse in the extreme still fortune seemed set to run in favour of france the prince adelbert was mostly at this point held together by hopes and prayers and was really only fit for guard duty in harbor and the three larger german ironclads all rapidly came down with engine problems after a single joint sweep out into the north sea which had resulted in no encounters possibly as a result of extensive cruising up and down the channel which they'd taken part in immediately before the war had begun this left only the tiny arminius available to take on the french fleet and although of course some ships were in refit and others were scattered across the french empire an overwhelmingly powerful fleet did indeed show up as the french had decided that well if all else failed blockade was the way to go after all they'd worked on the confederacy in the american civil war and had been deeply annoying to prussia when it had been fighting denmark somewhat more recently thus dozens of french warships of all types began to appear in the north sea and after passing through the neutral waters between denmark sweden and norway off the prussian coast as well german ships began to be captured and international trade began to fall off but this success was only skin-deep in reality the french navy was actually in a lot of trouble but had almost nothing to do with the opponent except for the fact that the prussian ironclads refused to be drawn into a straight-up fight which meant that the french were left sailing around chasing merchant ships for an extended period of time firstly the war had come on relatively quickly reserve sailors who would be expected to fill out the crews when the entire marine national went to war were not physically present in france many of them having headed off for seasonal work aboard fishing and merchant ships thousands of miles away this meant that the remaining crews were stretched pretty thin and would need periods of rest when their ships returned to france and only some of the french fleet could actually even put to sea at any one time this lack of personnel also meant that french forces turned up at their stations without accurate charts of the areas that they were supposed to be patrolling secondly the french fleet had largely been built up with a battle in mind so there was no system of extensive coal resupply in place to top up their bunkers which themselves provided relatively limited capacity thanks to the inefficiency of steam engines of the period whilst the ship's coal supplies could last for a while sooner or later after chasing the tenth merchant men in as many days coal began to run out which forced the french ships to start cycling back to france to refuel this in turn diminished the number of ships on station which made the blockade thinner and made blockade running easier the ships that were attempting to run the blockade had of course merely to pile on all possible sail and steam because they'd either make it past to safe harbor or not and if they didn't they didn't have to worry if they did they could refuel there and thus the dual powered merchant ships could usually outrun or out sail a heavy iron clad that was trying to come after them with sails only to conserve fuel this wasn't to say the blockade was completely ineffective almost 100 ships would be stopped and seized over the course of the war but whilst this did cause problems it was nowhere near enough to choke off seabourn trade and supply to the germans thirdly a fair amount of trade with german ports was done by ships flying a british flag britain after all had the largest merchant marine on the planet as well as the largest combat navy a good chunk of which was eyeing the french navy rather covetously from across the channel with their hands full on land the last thing that the french needed was the royal navy showing up very angry because ships flying the british flag had been inconvenienced on the uk's doorstep the resulting hesitancy higher up the food chain put a further serious dent in the french ship's ability to actually enforce the blockade especially once various merchant ships caught onto the issue and began flying british flags on their way into and out of german ports regardless of their actual owner's places of registration fourthly although small the arminius was making use of its shallow draft to regularly evade the blockade and then go wandering the seas looking for a fight in dozens of short voyages this resulted in a handful of rather desolatory skirmishes trading a handful of shots at long range with various french warships but nothing as exciting as an actual fight but it did keep the french warships distracted which made the job of the blockade runners easier still although it came close early on to being run down by a superior french squadron but in that particular case managing to use its shallow draft to escape this ran in parallel to another big idea whilst denmark had come off the worst in their recent conflict with prussia the french hoped to try to get them to try again and then the combined forces of france and denmark along with french access to danish ports and a second avenue of attack might swing the balance of the war more so the theory went but the danes would need some persuading so the plan was to embark units of the french army along with the navy's own marines and other infantry units and conduct a landing on the north german coast with a minimal german opposition at sea this would in theory be a relatively unopposed transportation job with the chosen landing area of arusand near haidersleben but as the first blockading ships arrived on station and some of the lighter vessels probed in close they discovered that significant improvements had been made to german coastal defenses including the installation of brand new long-range naval artillery the conflict was taking place in a relatively short window where effective battle range for a ship was still in the high hundreds to low thousands of yards despite the guns being physically capable of shooting much further this was largely due to the lack of rangefinders and other fire control systems as well as stabilizers all of which would be invented oh in the following decades but for land guns the recent increases in absolute range were far more easily exploited since of course fortifications don't tend to move and so it was much easier to engage a target out at sea at ranges pushing three to four thousand yards for the heaviest french ironclads this wasn't strictly an issue they could sail in their armor would weather the fire they could then get into range and begin counter battery fire but for slow and more vulnerable troop transports it was a complete mission killer one large shell punching through the side of a transport could kill dozens if not hundreds of men packed in close together and there'd be a lot more than one shell coming in even if the german ironclads didn't emerge and no one could guarantee that they wouldn't between this and a mixture of mobile german regular and volunteer forces kept behind specifically just in case the french managed to landing it meant the whole invasion idea had to be called off and the troops including the marines were diverted to help in the land war another issue was communication the french government tried to remotely micromanage the operations to such a degree that admiral bouvey villemez was at one point in receipt of one set of orders to return to france and another set of orders telling him to remain in the baltic both from the same part of the french government the smaller non-iron-clad vessels of the german fleet weren't exactly idle either with sms adler sms gorilla and sms nymph and a few others executing hit-and-run needling attacks on the french forces running them ragged chasing the small but swift craft all of this was happening over the summer months at the start of the war by the autumn the french fleet had gotten critically low on coal annoyed at the general ineffectiveness of what they were doing and fed up of the increasing storms and thus mostly gone home for the winter just in time for the bigger german iron class to fix their engine problems and emerge looking for a fight only to encounter nothing more aggressive than a few seagulls who were slightly irritated at having been disturbed whilst the squadron of friendships would continue to operate a notional blockade in the north sea for much of the rest of the war the actual blockade by this point was effectively over as it was actually costing far more to keep the fleet at sea than the blockade was ever likely to cost the germans in terms of monetary damages and without an at-sea resupply system for the bunkers it was impossible for even the ships on station to make that many interceptions for any real excitement at sea you had to look further afield the screw corvettes sms hertha and sms medusa found themselves in yokohama when a contingent of french warships with superior firepower turned up to blockade them in port the two ships would thus be stuck there for the remainder of the war but elsewhere a pair of sloops sometimes called gunboats one from each side we're heading towards the only actual full naval battle of the war leadership was actually designed for peer-to-peer combat the role of such specials was to act as a deterrent to deal with the odd pirate and to bombard the occasional colonial uprising whilst the core of both sides fleets were in europe and made up largely of ironclads the french bouvet and the german meteor were both wooden hold ships of less than a thousand tons the french vessel was just over not faster and displaced about 80 more at 750 tons compared to meteor's rather diminutive 415 tons and carried five guns a main 160 millimeter weapon and four 120 millimeter guns although it was originally supposed to carry two of the latter but they'd upgunned it meteor made do with a single 150 millimeter gun and a pair of 120 millimeter weapons on november the 7th 1870 meteor arrived in havana cuba after a brief brush with a reef a few hours later coming from the opposite direction came bouvet however since cuba belonged to spain neither ship could undertake any offensive action and the two were left to glare at each other across the harbour from their respective anchorages amongst the other ships in that harbour was the french mail ship nouveau monde which left the next day but rapidly came back again amidst concern that meteor might come after it and run it down the german ship hadn't in fact done so since that would invite the emotionally stronger bouve to come after it in a stern chase but confident in his ship's abilities and wanting to get on with some good commerce raiding captain lieutenant edouard von nor sent out a formal challenge to combat in the manner of a medieval night commander francais of the bouve accepted and headed out to sea in the absence of any other pressing concerns the conventions of the time meant that meteor had to wait 24 hours before leaving herself and so the next day escorted by the spanish ship hernan cortes she sailed out to the 10 mile mark where bouvet was conveniently waiting the moment meteor crossed the territorial limit both sides opened up and the two ships quickly entered a spiral of ever closing range and the local fish population was subjected to an enthusiastic barrage but relatively little damage was actually done to their targets a few minor damaging hits on either side were however soon exacerbated when bouvet decided to put an end to all this silliness by ramming the smaller meteor this initially went well for the french ship and two out of the three masts on the german vessel collapsed with the rigging fouling the propeller leaving meteor dead in the water as the bouvet hauled off to have a go again either to try and finish off the meteor or get in a better position to launch a boarding action meteor's gunners finally scored a meaningful hit severing a steam pipe and dropping the french ship's speed to a crawl the crew of the meteor had cut free the loose rigging and could now move again and so meteor had the advantage and now attempted to close in to finish off its foe but buuvei still had some power left and the marston sails were still intact and so she was able to make it back across the territorial line where the spanish corvette which had been acting as a referee had to fire a warning shot in order to dissuade meteor from taking further advantage of this swing in fortune by that evening both vessels were back in harbor again bouvet to repair her propulsion systems and meteor to rebuild her masts and yards there was no way she'd get especially far unjust engine power alone casualties were relatively light they were less than 10 killed and somewhere between four and ten wounded between both vessels eventually repairs would be complete on both ships and they'd end up going their separate ways bouve ended up being wrecked less than a year later without any further loss of life whilst meteor would see another seven years off and on service before she was eventually scrapped back in europe the turn of the war against france saw the men who had been intended to invade germany in a landing diverted to the main front as we already mentioned most of whom would actually be with the emperor at the battle of sedan which rather ended their campaign as the war progressed french warships in port had their crews and guns removed to help in the defense of paris and other nearby cities and french naval strength dwindled still further the end of the war saw something of a turnaround as a smaller german ship which was on raiding duty took three prizes off the french coast albeit shortly thereafter being forced to flee for safety in a spanish port by french frigates that set out in response the naval war such as it had been thus slowly wound down over the course of january 1871 and the war came to an end at the conclusion of the month on paper the french fleet should have walked right over the smaller german force but if anything it was the german fleet that was beginning to gain an ascendancy in some areas toward the end of the conflict but oddly the french navy despite its failures at sea ended the war with huge popularity largely due to the specialism of and professionalism of the specialist gunners and other officers and men who had provided some of the stoutest and best organized defense of the capital during the siege of paris however simple public popularity could not address the fact that a shattered french army needed rebuilding war debts and indemnities had to be repaid and the vast battle fleet had been able to do very little to influence the outcome of the war french admirals admitting that even if they had swept the german ships from the sea they couldn't really have changed the outcome of the land war as a whole so whilst a small french building program would continue in the early 1870s and in many ways this conflict would actually begin the slide into the adoption of the journey coal for some time in the marine national on the other hand whilst victorious the german fleet didn't expand all that much some additional iron clads will be completed and a few new coastal defense battleships will be planned but apart from replacing some older vessels the kaiserlike marina would remain a coastal defense force with a few small overseas ships for some time to come this video has been produced in association with the fine folks over at real time history they're covering the war week by week and there's a link to their channel in the description below the reason for the video being released on this particular day is that they are covering the battle of havana as well because it was this week the that particular battle occurred all the way back in 1870 because let's face it it's pretty much the most exciting thing that happened in the naval side of the franco-prussian war and so if you'd like to see what the context of that battle was in terms of the larger progress of the war and indeed catch up with the war in general as it had progressed up to november in 1870 then again definitely head over there they have a really good writing team as i said they're covering the entire spectrum of the war and they've managed to recruit some of the leading german historians of this particular conflict so plenty more to see there and uh give him a wave and tell him i sent you that's it for this video thanks for watching if you have a comment or suggestion for a ship to review let us know in the comments below don't forget to comment on the pinned post for dry dock questions

Channel: Drachinifel

Views: 326,557

Keywords: wows, world of warships, Franco-Prussian war, ironclad, Bouvet, SMS Meteor, SMS Arminius, blockade

Id: 2M2fQSxc5NA

Length: 22min 27sec (1347 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 11 2021