Henry Brown wrote:Dilandu wrote:Exactly. Please, forgive me if I could not explain it clearly enough.
Nothing to be forgiven for. I understood what you meant. However I have noticed in your previous posts that you seem to be very fond of the French navy. Am I correct in guessing that French is your 1st language and English is your 2nd?
Mo, my first is Russian.
I simply think the French navy was technologically and tactically superior (even despite the Jeune Ecole) to the RN in the best part of XIX century.
In 1870- early 1880, the french navy build very similar on tactical characteristics ironclads. "Richelieu", "Ocean", "Marengo", "Suffren", "Friedland", "Colbert", "Trident" and "Redoutable" with the ten of "Provence"-class formed two very uniformed (despite the ships weren't actually identical) squadrons, that could literally tera apart the Royal Navy's mish-mash of individual ironclads and small, very different series.
And in 1880th? Yes, the "Jeune Ecole" done a "very good" job against the french navy (and the political struggle and incompetence done at least twice as many harm), but "Hoshe" and "Marseau"-classes were clearly superior to their RN contemporaries (by the time of laid up, of course) as "Colossus" and "Ajax" classes.
And even in 1890th, the french naval engineers were clearly more competent that british in therms of artillery (the "Majestic"'s 305-mm/35 guns, in comparsion with french 305-mm/40-45-50 was... pitful), armor scheme, and even tactics.