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Cherbourg Naval Base
Cherbourg Naval Base is a naval base in Cherbourg Harbour, Cherbourg, Manche department, Normandy. The town has been a base of the French Navy since the opening of the military port in 1813. History Early works Cherbourg had been a stronghold since Roman times, and was one of the strongest fortresses of the Hundred Years War. But until the 18th century it had only a shallow harbour, minor commercial activity and no military development. In the 17th century the military engineer Vauban drew up plans to develop Cherbourg into a port where passing ships could shelter from attack or storms. Vauban's plans included an artificial harbour, and the quadrupling of the size of the city. The project was eventually abandoned, before being temporarily revived under Louis XV. The British raid on Cherbourg in 1758 however caused severe damage to the barely completed commercial port. By the 1770s, with French involvement in the American War of Independence, Louis XVI sought to create a large mi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cherbourg
Cherbourg (; , , ), nrf, Chèrbourg, ) is a former commune and subprefecture located at the northern end of the Cotentin peninsula in the northwestern French department of Manche. It was merged into the commune of Cherbourg-Octeville on 28 February 2000,Décret 23 February 2000 which was merged into the new commune of Cherbourg-en-Cotentin on 1 January 2016. Cherbourg is protected by Cherbourg Harbour, between and |
Brest, France
Brest (; ) is a port city in the Finistère department, Brittany. Located in a sheltered bay not far from the western tip of the peninsula, and the western extremity of metropolitan France, Brest is an important harbour and the second French military port after Toulon. The city is located on the western edge of continental France. With 142,722 inhabitants in a 2007 census, Brest forms Western Brittany's largest metropolitan area (with a population of 300,300 in total), ranking third behind only Nantes and Rennes in the whole of historic Brittany, and the 19th most populous city in France; moreover, Brest provides services to the one million inhabitants of Western Brittany. Although Brest is by far the largest city in Finistère, the ''préfecture'' (regional capital) of the department is the much smaller Quimper. During the Middle Ages, the history of Brest was the history of its castle. Then Richelieu made it a military harbour in 1631. Brest grew around its arsenal unti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
French Revolution
The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in November 1799. Many of its ideas are considered fundamental principles of liberal democracy, while phrases like ''liberté, égalité, fraternité'' reappeared in other revolts, such as the 1917 Russian Revolution, and inspired campaigns for the abolition of slavery and universal suffrage. The values and institutions it created dominate French politics to this day. Its causes are generally agreed to be a combination of social, political and economic factors, which the ''Ancien Régime'' proved unable to manage. In May 1789, widespread social distress led to the convocation of the Estates General, which was converted into a National Assembly in June. Continuing unrest culminated in the Storming of the Bastille on 14 July, which led to a series of radical measures by the Assembly, i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Louis-Alexandre De Cessart
Louis-Alexandre de Cessart (25 August 1719, Paris – 12 April 1806, Rouen) was a French road and bridge engineer. He served in the "gendarmerie de la Maison du Roi", fighting at the battles of Fontenoy and Raucoux in 1745 and 1746. In 1747 he entered the school of Jean-Rodolphe Perronet, which later became the École nationale des ponts et chaussées. He contributed to the ''Encyclopédie'' with Perronet and Jean-Baptiste de Voglie. He was made under-engineer of the generality of Tours in 1751. Notably, it was he who conceived several bridges over the river Loire, along with the Pont des Arts over the Seine in Paris, the first dike project at Cherbourg Cherbourg (; , , ), nrf, Chèrbourg, ) is a former commune and subprefecture located at the northern end of the Cotentin peninsula in the northwestern French department of Manche. It was merged into the commune of Cherbourg-Octeville on 28 Feb ..., and several quays at ports in north-west France. Bibliography *Louis-Vi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hulk (ship Type)
A hulk is a ship that is afloat, but incapable of going to sea. Hulk may be used to describe a ship that has been launched but not completed, an abandoned wreck or shell, or to refer to an old ship that has had its rigging or internal equipment removed, retaining only its buoyant qualities. The word hulk also may be used as a verb: a ship is "hulked" to convert it to a hulk. The verb was also applied to crews of Royal Navy ships in dock, who were sent to the receiving ship for accommodation, or "hulked". Hulks have a variety of uses such as housing, prisons, salvage pontoons, gambling sites, naval training, or cargo storage. In the days of sail, many hulls served longer as hulks than they did as functional ships. Wooden ships were often hulked when the hull structure became too old and weak to withstand the stresses of sailing. More recently, ships have been hulked when they become obsolete or when they become uneconomical to operate. Sheer hulk A sheer hulk (or shear hulk) w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Breakwater (structure)
A breakwater is a permanent structure constructed at a coastal area to protect against tides, currents, waves, and storm surges. Part of a coastal management system, breakwaters are installed to minimize erosion, and to protect anchorages, helping isolate vessels within them from marine hazards such as prop washes and wind-driven waves. A breakwater, also known in some contexts as a jetty, may be connected to land or freestanding, and may contain a walkway or road for vehicle access. On beaches where longshore drift threatens the erosion of beach material, smaller structures on the beach, usually perpendicular to the water's edge, may be installed. Their action on waves and current is intended to slow the longshore drift and discourage mobilisation of beach material. In this usage they are more usually referred to as groynes. Purposes Breakwaters reduce the intensity of wave action in inshore waters and thereby provide safe harbourage. Breakwaters may also be small structu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Querqueville
Querqueville () is a former commune in the Manche department in north-western France. On 1 January 2016, it was merged into the new commune of Cherbourg-en-Cotentin. 1 December 2015 The Chapel of Saint Germanus (''Chapelle Saint-Germain'') with its floorplan incorporates elements of one of the earliest surviving places of worship in the - perhaps second only to the Gallo-Roman baptistry at < ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Toise
A toise (; symbol: T) is a unit of measure for length, area and volume originating in pre-revolutionary France. In North America, it was used in colonial French establishments in early New France, French Louisiana (''Louisiane''), Acadia (''Acadie'') and Quebec. The related () was used in Portugal, Brazil, and other parts of the Portuguese Empire until the adoption of the metric system. Definition Unit of length * 1 toise was divided in 6 feet (french: pieds) or 72 inches () or 864 lines () in France until 1812. : In 1799 the metre was defined to be exactly 443.296 or toise, with the intention that the metre should equal of the distance from the pole to the equator. This had the effect of making the toise approximately 1949.03631 mm. : According to an article written in 1866, during measurement of various standard length artefacts from several countries, the toise was measured as 1,949.03632 mm. :Since before 1394, the standard for the toise of Paris was an iron ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Louis De La Couldre De La Bretonnière
Louis Jean de la Couldre, Comte de La Bretonnière, 6/8 July 1741, to 25 November 1809, was a French naval officer and engineer, who designed Cherbourg Harbour. He was born at Château de la Bretonnière, Marchésieux, and died in Paris. Life He joined the navy aged 14, becoming an officer two years later and fighting in the Seven Years' War and American War of Independence. He was made a captain aged 40 as a reward for his bravery. He was born a viscount, made a count by royal decree in 1787 and made a member of the Order of Cincinnatus, on the recommendation of George Washington. In 1763 he took on important hydrographic work to clarify France's coastal charts. The duc d'Harcourt, governor of Normandy, and Suffren, Lieutenant général des armées navales, had been ordered by Louis XVI to build a major military port on France's north-west coast. In 1776 they thus put La Bretonnière and Pierre Méchain in charge of perfecting the mapping of the coast between Dunkirk and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue
Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue is a commune in the Manche department in Normandy in north-western France. Toponymy Saint-Vaast is the Norman name of Saint Vedast and Hougue is a Norman language word meaning a "mound" or "loaf" and comes from the Old Norse word ''haugr''. Geography Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue is part of the canton of Val-de-Saire and the arrondissement of Cherbourg. The town had a population of 1,712 in 2019. The island of Tatihou forms part of the Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue commune. History Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue is located in Normandy and was a part of the Duchy of Normandy. In 1001, near Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue, Néel I de Saint-Saveur (related with Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte in the Cotentin Peninsula) (occasionally named Nigel or Niel), a Norman baron of the House of Saint-Sauveur ( fr), repulsed an Anglo-Saxon incursion led by King Æthelred II; a pillaging raid in reprisal for the Viking expeditions into the Anglo-Saxon kingdom. The raid failed thanks to the effort of Neel, who e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antoine Choquet De Lindu
Antoine Choquet de Lindu (7 November 1712, in Brest – 7 October 1790, in Brest) was a French architect and military engineer in the service of the French Navy Life Entering the Navy as a clerk, like his father, he executed a very large number of very important buildings at Brest, well known for their solidity if not for their elegance and so perfectly fitted to their purpose. Made sous-ingénieur in 1743, he then became chief engineer in 1746. From 1764 to 1767, the Ministry of the Navy and the Ministry for War were merged, and Choquet de Lindu was attached to the royal corps of engineers, with a commission as an infantry captain (though he was kept on as director of the maritime works of the port of Brest, under Amédée-François Frézier). Between 1738 and his retirement in 1784 Choquet de Lindu devoted himself to the rebuilding and expansion of the port of Brest, producing "works of all kinds" – barracks, hospitals, magazines, dry docks, shipyards, theatres, prisons, sai ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
