''Dupetit-Thouars'' was a armoured cruiser of the

French Navy The French Navy (french: Marine nationale, lit=National Navy), informally , is the maritime arm of the French Armed Forces and one of the five military service branches of France. It is among the largest and most powerful naval forces in t ...

. She was torpedoed and sunk on 7 August 1918 by with the loss of 13 of her crew.

Design and description

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, the ''Gueydon''-class ships were intended to fill the commerce-raiding strategy of the

Jeune École The ''Jeune École'' ("Young School") was a strategic naval concept developed during the 19th century. It advocated the use of small, heavily armed vessels to combat larger battleships, and the use of commerce raiders to cripple the trade of the ...

. They measured

long overall __NOTOC__ Length overall (LOA, o/a, o.a. or oa) is the maximum length of a vessel's hull measured parallel to the waterline. This length is important while docking the ship. It is the most commonly used way of expressing the size of a ship, an ...

with a

beam Beam may refer to: Streams of particles or energy *Light beam, or beam of light, a directional projection of light energy **Laser beam *Particle beam, a stream of charged or neutral particles **Charged particle beam, a spatially localized grou ...

of and had a draught of . ''Dupetit-Thouars'' displaced . The ship had a crew of 566 officers and enlisted men.Campbell, p. 305 The ''Gueydon'' class had three vertical triple-expansion steam engines, each driving a single

propeller shaft A drive shaft, driveshaft, driving shaft, tailshaft (Australian English), propeller shaft (prop shaft), or Cardan shaft (after Girolamo Cardano) is a component for transmitting mechanical power and torque and rotation, usually used to connect ...

. Steam for ''Dupetit-Thouars''s engines was provided by 28

Belleville boiler There have been a vast number of designs of steam boiler, particularly towards the end of the 19th century when the technology was evolving rapidly. A great many of these took the names of their originators or primary manufacturers, rather than a m ...

s and they were rated at a total of that gave them a speed of . The ships enough coal to steam for at a speed of .Silverstone, p. 79 The ''Gueydon''s had a main armament that consisted of two 40- caliber guns that were mounted in single

gun turret A gun turret (or simply turret) is a mounting platform from which weapons can be fired that affords protection, visibility and ability to turn and aim. A modern gun turret is generally a rotatable weapon mount that houses the crew or mechani ...

s, one each fore and aft of the superstructure. Their secondary armament comprised eight 45-caliber quick-firing (QF) Canon de Modèle 1893 guns in casemates. For anti-

torpedo boat A torpedo boat is a relatively small and fast naval ship designed to carry torpedoes into battle. The first designs were steam-powered craft dedicated to ramming enemy ships with explosive spar torpedoes. Later evolutions launched variants of ...

defense, they carried four 45-caliber QF Canon de Modèle 1891 guns on the

forecastle The forecastle ( ; contracted as fo'c'sle or fo'c's'le) is the upper deck of a sailing ship forward of the foremast, or, historically, the forward part of a ship with the sailors' living quarters. Related to the latter meaning is the phrase " be ...

deck, as well as ten QF and four QF Hotchkiss guns. They were also armed with two submerged

torpedo tube A torpedo tube is a cylindrical device for launching torpedoes. There are two main types of torpedo tube: underwater tubes fitted to submarines and some surface ships, and deck-mounted units (also referred to as torpedo launchers) installed aboa ...

s. The

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armor belt Belt armor is a layer of heavy metal armor plated onto or within the outer hulls of warships, typically on battleships, battlecruisers and cruisers, and aircraft carriers. The belt armor is designed to prevent projectiles from penetrating ...

of the ''Gueydon''-class cruisers covered most of the ships' hull. The lower

strake On a vessel's hull, a strake is a longitudinal course of planking or plating which runs from the boat's stempost (at the bows) to the sternpost or transom (at the rear). The garboard strakes are the two immediately adjacent to the keel on ea ...

of armor was generally thick, although it reduced to forward, aft. The curved lower protective deck ranged in thickness from . The gun turrets were protected by armor and had roofs thick.

Construction and career

''Dupetit-Thouars'' took part in the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. In 1918, she was part of the Atlantic Naval Division, under Commander Paqué, and tasked with escort duty. On 7 August 1918, escorting a 24-ship convoy inbound from New York, she was torpedoed by the submarine , off

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. At nightfall, at 20:51, a torpedo hit the port side underneath the forward bridge, followed ten seconds after by another under the aft bridge. The explosions killed three men, and neither the submarine nor her periscope were spotted, although a Lieutenant detected the first torpedo shortly before it hit. Assessment of the ship soon revealed extensive damage, but as the list was moderate, the officers deemed that although the ship was lost, she would not sink rapidly. They moved the ship off the route of the convoy, radioed a distress call, and stopped the engines to allow the crew to evacuate. The list then started to increase while the crew abandoned ship. Fifty minutes after the torpedo hit, ''Dupetit-Thouars'' rolled over and sank, killing ten sailors still aboard trying to launch the last raft. Following the sinking, ''U-62'' surfaced to inquire as to the name and tonnage of the cruiser, and collect a ribbon from a sailor's hat. The survivors spent 16 hours in boats and rafts before being rescued the next day, in late afternoon, by six US destroyers , , , , and . ''Dupetit-Thouars'' was mentioned in dispatches at the Army level on 25 October 1919, the mention stating

Notes

Bibliography

* * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Dupetit-Thouars (1901) 1901 ships Ships built in France Gueydon-class cruisers World War I cruisers of France World War I shipwrecks in the Atlantic Ocean Ships sunk by German submarines in World War I Maritime incidents in 1918 Dupetit Thouars family