The ''Soleil'' 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 ...
, designed by Deviot and constructed by the Dutch shipwright Jan Gron (usually called Jean de Werth in French) 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 ...
. She and her sister ''
Lune
Lune may refer to:
Rivers
*River Lune, in Lancashire and Cumbria, England
*River Lune, Durham, in County Durham, England
*Lune (Weser), a 43 km-long tributary of the Weser in Germany
*Lune River (Tasmania), in south-eastern Tasmania, Australia
Pl ...
'' 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 ''Soleil'' 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 ''Chef d'escadre'' Marquis de Montigny, and in the Battle of Castellammare on 21/22 December 1647. By 1671 she had been re-armed with 22 x 12-pounders on the lower deck and 14 x 8-pounders on the upper deck. She was renamed ''Hercule'' on 24 June 1671, then quickly renamed ''Marquis'' 23 days later. She was condemned on 28 June 1672 and sold in August to be taken to pieces.
Notess
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
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