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Duquesne-class Cruiser (1876)
The ''Duquesne'' class was a group of two unprotected cruisers built for the French Navy in the 1870s. The class comprised two ships: and . They were ordered in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War, and were intended for use against commerce raiders, which necessitated a high top speed, heavy armament, and long cruising radius. Both ships' engines proved to be very unreliable, required significant maintenance to keep in operation, and burned coal voraciously. Their large crews also increased the cost of operating the vessels, and all of these problems led to short service lives. Over the course of the twenty-five years following their ship launching, launch, ''Duquesne'' saw active service for just seven years, while ''Tourville'' was in ship commissioning, commission for only four. The former made a single deployment overseas in the mid-1880s, when she cruised on the Pacific station for three years, while ''Tourville'' spent just a year in the Far East before being recalled. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Unprotected Cruiser
An unprotected cruiser was a type of naval warship in use during the early 1870s Victorian or pre-dreadnought era (about 1880 to 1905). The name was meant to distinguish these ships from “protected cruisers”, which had become accepted in the 1880s. A protected cruiser did not have side armor on its hull like a battleship or “armored cruiser” but had only a curved armored deck built inside the ship — like an internal turtle shell — which prevented enemy fire penetrating through the ship down into the most critical areas such as machinery, boilers, and ammunition storage. An unprotected cruiser lacked even this level of internal protection. The definitions had some gray areas, because individual ships could be built with a protective deck that did not cover more than a small area of the ship, or was so thin as to be of little value. The same was true of the side armor on some armored cruisers. An unprotected cruiser was generally cheaper and less effective t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
