The ''Lune'' was a 38-gun

ship of the line A ship of the line was a type of naval warship constructed during the Age of Sail from the 17th century to the mid-19th century. The ship of the line was designed for the naval tactic known as the line of battle, which depended on the two colu ...

of the

French Royal 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 ...

, the first ship of the line to be built at the new state dockyard at Île d'Indret near

Nantes Nantes (, , ; Gallo: or ; ) is a city in Loire-Atlantique on the Loire, from the Atlantic coast. The city is the sixth largest in France, with a population of 314,138 in Nantes proper and a metropolitan area of nearly 1 million inhabita ...

, designed by Deviot and constructed by the Dutch shipwright Jan Gron (usually called Jean de Werth in French). She and her sister ''

Soleil SOLEIL ("Sun" in French) is a synchrotron facility near Paris, France. It performed its first acceleration of electrons on May 14, 2006. The name ''SOLEIL'' is a backronym for ''Source optimisée de lumière d’énergie intermédiaire du LURE' ...

'' were

two-decker A two-decker is a sail warship which carried her guns on two fully armed decks. Usually additional guns were carried on the upper works (forecastle and quarterdeck), but this was not a continuous battery and thus not counted as a full gun deck ...

s, with a mixture of bronze guns on both gun decks. The ''Lune'' took part in the

Battle of Orbitello The Battle of Orbetello, also known as the Battle of Isola del Giglio, was a major naval engagement of the Franco-Spanish War of 1635. It was fought on 14 June 1646 off the Spanish-ruled town of Orbetello, on the coast of Tuscany, Italy, betwee ...

on 14 June 1646, as the flagship of ''Vice-amiral'' Louis Foucault de Saint-Germain-Beaupré, Comte de Daugnon, in the Battle of Castellammare on 21/22 December 1647, and in the Battle of Pertuis d'Antioche on 8 August 1652. She sailed on 9 November 1664 from

Toulon Toulon (, , ; oc, label= Provençal, Tolon , , ) is a city on the French Riviera and a large port on the Mediterranean coast, with a major naval base. Located in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region, and the Provence province, Toulon is th ...

for the

Hyères Islands Hyères (), Provençal Occitan: ''Ieras'' in classical norm, or ''Iero'' in Mistralian norm) is a commune in the Var department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in southeastern France. The old town lies from the sea clustered around th ...

while carrying troops of the 1st Regiment of Picardy, but a half-hour after sailing she suddenly broke apart at the head and sank "like a marble", with only 60 survivors from over 600 aboard.

Sources and references

* *''Nomenclature des Vaisseaux de Louis XIII et de la régence d'Anne d'Autriche, 1610 a 1661''. Alain Demerliac (Editions Omega, Nice – 2004). *''The Sun King's Vessels'' (2015) - Jean-Claude Lemineur; English translation by François Fougerat. Editions ANCRE. *Winfield, Rif and Roberts, Stephen (2017) ''French Warships in the Age of Sail 1626-1786: Design, Construction, Careers and Fates.'' Seaforth Publishing. .
Vaisseaux de Ligne Français de 1682 à 1780 1
Ships of the line of the French Navy 1640s ships {{France-mil-ship-stub