Hi Dilandu,
You seem to be seriously claiming the French Navy was some how obviously superior than the RN in 1896.
From what I've read and just checked, that personal opinion would have seriously surprised the French Navy Government and public at the time, NTM decades before or after.
Please feel free to express your opinion but please don't claim it as an inarguable fact.
You may feel their ships might have been individually superior in some particular ways, and may even be right in some ways, but it doesn't mean that's a universal opinion or totally accurate.
Certainly the French didn't feel they had naval superiority over the RN, according to what Google books found looking for 1885 french torpedo [Preparing for blockade 1885-1914: Naval Contingency For Economic warfare by Dr Stephen Cobb] including the fact that the Niger River and Fashoda crises of 1898 demonstrated how much further they had fallen behind the RN in mobilizing what they did have [ie well over a month].
Regarding French ship design, their late 18th century sailings ships were indeed superior to the average British as some British then bragged "most of the best British ships were built by the French and Spanish" ie their better design didn't stop them from being captured by the poorer designed RN ships for obviously other reasons and served it long and well.
The French built only 12 battleships of very different types [shall we say experimental?] in the ten years between 1886-1896 often using Harvey steel not Creusot, as anything older was grossly obsolete compared to dozens by the RN [whole squadrons all of one type etc], and the 1897 Spithead review by their own admission clearly demonstrated just how far behind the RN they had fallen.
The French 1885-1896 torpedoes seem rather worthless because I can't get anything good on Google regarding their details while others are [perhaps you should write a wiki article on them] NTM apparently some of the French torpedo boats built then were completed without torpedoes, while the various listed torpedoes only start mentioning those from 1899 as evidently being any good.
The RN had built a torpedo boat in the 1877 but fount the state of the art left a great deal to be desired, continued researching and testing but wisely didn't yet base their naval power on such things.
Having a ram on warships for a generation was a result of the mistaken lessons of the battle of Lissa, where the Italians had bigger or better rams, but the Austrian navy demonstrated again it was the men, their morale courage, determination and training and superior leadership of course, that decided the battle, not the popular design attributes and numbers that seemed to favor the Italians.
L
Dilandu wrote:lyonheart wrote:not that they were that much of a threat to the RN in the first place, given the Jeune Ecole's preferences, NTM the politicians, for cheaper solutions than building one for one with the RN.
Well, actually they were stronger than Royal Navy in 1898.
Their guns have longer barrels and could be reloaded in any train angle, their shells were filled with more powerfull explosives, their tactic were greatly superior and they could put all avaliable ships in sea for 48 hours (in 1896, the Royal Navy needed more than a month to mobilise just the part of reserve). And their torpedo tactics... well, they have torpedo tactics. RN haven't.
and, Mangy Fur the Smart Alick Spacecat.