Jacques-Noël Sané (18 February 1740 – 22 August 1831) was a French shipwright. He was the creator of standardised designs for

ships 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 involved the two column ...

and

frigate A frigate () is a type of warship. In different eras, the roles and capabilities of ships classified as frigates have varied. The name frigate in the 17th to early 18th centuries was given to any full-rigged ship built for speed and maneuvera ...

s fielded by the

French Navy The French Navy (, , ), informally (, ), is the Navy, maritime arm of the French Armed Forces and one of the four military service branches of History of France, France. It is among the largest and most powerful List of navies, naval forces i ...

in the 1780s, which served during the

French Revolutionary Wars The French Revolutionary Wars () were a series of sweeping military conflicts resulting from the French Revolution that lasted from 1792 until 1802. They pitted French First Republic, France against Kingdom of Great Britain, Great Britain, Habsb ...

and the

Napoleonic Wars {{Infobox military conflict , conflict = Napoleonic Wars , partof = the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars , image = Napoleonic Wars (revision).jpg , caption = Left to right, top to bottom:Battl ...

and in some cases remained in service into the 1860s. Several ships designed by him were captured by the

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the naval warfare force of the United Kingdom. It is a component of His Majesty's Naval Service, and its officers hold their commissions from the King of the United Kingdom, King. Although warships were used by Kingdom ...

, which commissioned and even copied several of them. His achievements led Sané to be nicknamed the "naval Vauban."French: "''Vauban de la Marine''", after

Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban Sébastien is a common French given name. It is a French form of the Latin name ''Sebastianus'' meaning "from Sebaste". Sebaste was a common placename in classical Antiquity, derived from the Greek word ''σεβαστος'', or ''sebastos'', mea ...

known for his breakthrough

fortifications A fortification (also called a fort, fortress, fastness, or stronghold) is a military construction designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from La ...

Biography

Born in Brest in a family of sailors, Sané became a student engineer in 1758 and joined the naval construction academy in Paris in 1765, graduating on 1 October 1766 as an assistant engineer. In 1767, he worked under Ollivier the Elder on naval ships, and with

Antoine Choquet de Lindu Antoine Choquet de Lindu (7 November 1712, in Brest – 7 October 1790, in Brest) was a French architect and military engineer in the service of the French Navy. Life Choquet de Lindu was born in Brest on 7 November 1712, into a family of admini ...

on merchant ships. In 1769, he embarked on the

fluyt A fluyt (archaic Dutch language, Dutch: ''fluijt'' "flute"; ) is a Dutch type of sailing ship, sailing vessel originally designed by the shipwrights of Hoorn as a dedicated ship transport, cargo vessel. Originating in the Dutch Republic in the 16 ...

, bound for

Martinique Martinique ( ; or ; Kalinago language, Kalinago: or ) is an island in the Lesser Antilles of the West Indies, in the eastern Caribbean Sea. It was previously known as Iguanacaera which translates to iguana island in Carib language, Kariʼn ...

with four

scow A scow is a smaller type of barge. Some scows are rigged as sailboat, sailing scows. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, scows carried cargo in coastal waters and inland waterways, having an advantage for navigating shallow water or small ha ...

s and a

dredger Dredging is the excavation of material from a water environment. Possible reasons for dredging include improving existing water features; reshaping land and water features to alter drainage, navigability, and commercial use; constructing dam ...

of his design. Promoted to engineer in 1774, he designed the

74-gun The "seventy-four" was a type of two- decked sailing ship of the line, which nominally carried 74 guns. It was developed by the French navy in the 1740s, replacing earlier classes of 60- and 62-gun ships, as a larger complement to the recently de ...

, comprising and . He then worked on several 12-pounder

s.Jaquin, p.48 During the

War of American Independence The American Revolutionary War (April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783), also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence, was the armed conflict that comprised the final eight years of the broader American Revolution, in which Am ...

, Navy minister Sartine, his successor

Castries Castries () is the capital city, capital and largest city of Saint Lucia, an island country in the Caribbean. The urban area has a population of approximately 20,000, while the eponymous Castries Quarter, district has a population of just under ...

, and engineer

Borda The Bremen Overseas Research and Development Association (BORDA) is a non-profit international development organization headquartered in Bremen, Germany. It has regional offices in Afghanistan, India, Indonesia, Mexico, and Tanzania, as well as ...

requested plans to standardise the production of

18-pounder The Ordnance QF 18-pounder,British military traditionally denoted smaller ordnance by the weight of its standard projectile, in this case approximately or simply 18-pounder gun, was the standard British Empire field gun of the First World War ...

frigates (equivalent to the British

fifth-rate In the rating system of the Royal Navy used to categorise sailing warships, a fifth rate was the second-smallest class of warships in a hierarchical system of six " ratings" based on size and firepower. Rating The rating system in the Royal N ...

), 74-gun ships of the line (equivalent to the British

third-rate In the rating system of the Royal Navy, a third rate was a ship of the line which from the 1720s mounted between 64 and 80 guns, typically built with two gun decks (thus the related term two-decker). Rating When the rating system was f ...

), 80-gun

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 (without equivalent: similar to a third-rate, but longer than a

second-rate In the rating system of the Royal Navy used to categorise sailing warships, a second-rate was a ship of the line which by the start of the 18th century mounted 90 to 98 guns on three gun decks; earlier 17th-century second rates had fewer guns ...

and with comparable firepower), and 118-gun

three-decker A three-decker was a sailing warship which carried her principal carriage-mounted guns on three fully armed decks. Usually additional (smaller) guns were carried on the upper works (forecastle and quarterdeck), but this was not a continuous ba ...

s (equivalent to the British

first-rate In the rating system of the Royal Navy used to categorise sailing warships, a first rate was the designation for the largest ships of the line. Originating in the Jacobean era with the designation of Ships Royal capable of carrying at least ...

). Sané won three successive competitions: * in 1782, his was selected for the 74-guns * in 1785, his was selected for the 118-guns * in 1787, his was later selected for the 80-gunsJaquin, p.51 In 1784, Sané had his only child, Amélie Fanny Gabrielle; she would later marry Captain Delarue de la Gréardière, and die in December 1812. On 18 June 1787, Sané joined the

Académie de Marine The Royal Naval Academy of France (, ) was founded at Brest by a ruling of 31 July 1752 by Antoine Louis de Rouillé, comte de Jouy, Secretary of State for the Navy. This institutionalised an earlier initiative by a group of officers from the ...

.Henwood, pp. 125-134 In April 1779, he arrived in

Saint-Malo Saint-Malo (, , ; Gallo language, Gallo: ; ) is a historic French port in Ille-et-Vilaine, Brittany (administrative region), Brittany. The Fortification, walled city on the English Channel coast had a long history of piracy, earning much wealth ...

for the construction of the , a 12-pounder 38-gun frigate. He furthermore drew the plans of the frigates , , and . In 1789, he was promoted to sub-director of naval constructions. In 1793, as director of Brest Harbour, he decided to

raze Raze may refer to: * Demolition **Slighting * Raze, Haute-Saône, a town in France * Raze (Underworld), a fictional character in the Underworld films * Raze (magazine), a videogame magazine published by Newsfield Publications from 1990-1991 * ''Ra ...

the older ships ''Brutus'', and .Debusscher, p. 38 He was made a member of the

French Academy of Sciences The French Academy of Sciences (, ) is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French Scientific method, scientific research. It was at the forefron ...

in 1796, and naval construction inspector on 7 July 1798, responsible for the coast of the Atlantic and of the English Channel; his duty comprised inspection of the harbours and selection of timbers from the forests in the

Pyrenees The Pyrenees are a mountain range straddling the border of France and Spain. They extend nearly from their union with the Cantabrian Mountains to Cap de Creus on the Mediterranean coast, reaching a maximum elevation of at the peak of Aneto. ...

.Jaquin, pp.53-54 In 1800, Sané was made General inspector for naval engineering, an office he would retain until 1817. In 1807, Sané designed a type of

corvette A corvette is a small warship. It is traditionally the smallest class of vessel considered to be a proper (or " rated") warship. The warship class above the corvette is that of the frigate, while the class below was historically that of the sloo ...

that remained in service until the end of the sailing navy. The same year, Napoléon required a collection of accurate ship models to document the French Navy;

Denis Decrès Vice-Admiral Denis Decrès (18 June 1761 – 7 December 1820) was a French Navy officer who served as Minister of the Navy and the Colonies from 1801 to 1814 and again in 1815. Early career Decrès was born in Châteauvillain, Haute-Marne ...

tasked Sané with the project, known as the

Trianon model collection The Trianon model collection is a set of high-quality ship models ordered by Napoléon for documentary purposes. History In July 1810 Denis Decrès ordered 13 models to be constructed specially for the collection, while others, already built, w ...

, for which 13 models were specially created and 6 others collected and upgraded. His plans for 18-pounder frigates were adopted in 1810; the same year, he was made a Baron of Empire. Under the Restoration, Sané was awarded the

Order of Saint Michael The Order of Saint Michael () is a French dynastic order of chivalry, founded by King Louis XI of France on 1 August 1469, in response to the Order of the Golden Fleece founded by Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, Louis' chief competitor fo ...

. In 1820, aged 80, he was made president of the

Commission de Paris The Commission de Paris was a body of French naval engineers gathered in 1821 to design the future frigates and ships of the line of the French Navy for the post-Empire era. Presided by Jacques-Noël Sané, the Commission comprised Jean-Marguerite ...

, although he never involved himself in the upcoming

steamship A steamship, often referred to as a steamer, is a type of steam-powered vessel, typically ocean-faring and seaworthy, that is propelled by one or more steam engines that typically move (turn) propellers or paddlewheels. The first steamships ...

revolution. The first steamer of the French Navy, , entered service in 1829. Sané died in Paris on 22 August 1831, aged 91.

Work

Sané was responsible for * 9 118-gun ships of the line of the ''Océan'' class * 5 110-gun ships of the * 27 80-guns of the ''Tonnant'' and classes * 107 74-guns of the ''Annibal'' and ''Téméraire'' classes, between 1783 and as late as 1841 * 65 18-pounder frigates of the ''Hébé'', , and classes, built between 1781 and 1814.

Legacy

Three ships of the French Navy have been named ''Sané'' after Jacques-Noël Sané.Vichot, p. 126 The class of 2004 of the

École nationale supérieure de techniques avancées Bretagne The ''École Nationale Supérieure de Techniques Avancées de Bretagne'' (; ), often referred as ENSTA Bretagne and formerly ENSIETA, is one of the 207 French engineering schools accredited on 1 September 2017 to deliver engineering diplomas (Fre ...

was named in his honour.

Sources and references

Notes

References

Sources

* * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Sane, Jacques Noel 1740 births 1831 deaths French Navy officers from Brest, France French naval architects