''Vendémiaire'' was a built for the French Navy (''Marine Nationale'') in the late 1900s. She was sunk with all hands when she was rammed by the pre-dreadnought battleship on 8 June 1912 while on maneuvers off the

Casquets Les Casquets or (The) Casquets ( ) is a group of rocks eight miles (13 km) northwest of Alderney in the Channel Islands; they are administered by the Bailiwick of Guernsey. The rocks are part of an underwater sandstone ridge. Other parts ...

in the English Channel.

Design and description

The ''Pluviôse'' class were built as part of the French Navy's 1905 building program to a double-hull design by Maxime Laubeuf.Gardiner & Gray, p. 209 The submarines displaced surfaced and submerged. They had an overall length of , 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 a draft of . Their crew numbered 2 officers and 23 enlisted men. For surface running, the boats were powered by two triple-expansion steam engines, each driving one propeller shaft using steam provided by two Du Temple boilers. When submerged each propeller was driven by a electric motor. On the surface they were designed to reach a maximum speed of and underwater. The submarines had a surface endurance of at and a submerged endurance of at . The first six boats completed were armed with a single internal bow torpedo tube; ''Vendémiare'' had one fitted in early 1910 while she was still under construction. All of the boats were fitted with six 450 mm external torpedo launchers; the pair firing forward were fixed outwards at an angle of seven degrees and the rear pair had an angle of five degrees. Following a ministerial order on 22 February 1910, the aft tubes were reversed so they too fired forward, but at an angle of eight degrees. The other launchers were a rotating pair of

Drzewiecki drop collar The Drzewiecki drop collar was an external torpedo launching system most commonly used by the French and Imperial Russian Navies in the first two decades of the 20th century. It was designed by Stefan Drzewiecki, a Polish engineer and inventor ...

s in a single mount positioned on top of the hull at the stern. They could traverse 150 degrees to each side of the boat. The ''Pluviôse''-class submarines carried eight torpedoes.

Construction and career

''Vendémiaire'', named after the first month of the French Republican calendar, was ordered on 26 August 1905 from the Arsenal de Cherbourg. The submarine was laid down in 1906, launched on 7 July 1910 and commissioned on 4 February 1911. ''Vendémiaire'' sank with the loss of her entire crew of 24 on 8 June 1912 after colliding with the

battleship A battleship is a large armored warship with a main battery consisting of large caliber guns. It dominated naval warfare in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The term ''battleship'' came into use in the late 1880s to describe a type of ...

in the English Channel off the

during maneuvers.

Notes

Bibliography

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External links

French Submarines: 1863 - Now

(French) {{DEFAULTSORT:Vendemiaire Pluviôse-class submarines Ships built in France 1907 ships Maritime incidents in 1912 Submarines sunk in collisions Warships lost with all hands Submarines lost with all hands French submarine accidents Lost submarines of France Shipwrecks in the English Channel