La Naïade, French corvette (With plans), 1779

[LeBoiteux]

La Naïade

(The Naiad)

French 9-pdr corvette

1779

20 guns

 

Dimensions  (pied du Roi) : 119 x 30,6 x 15,6

Armament : 20 x 9-pdr

Built by J.-M.-B. Coulomb (at Toulon), captured by the British in 1783 and converted into a 26-gun 6th-Rate, HMS Naiad(e).

Seven sister ships (built beween 1779-1781 with the best ship names ever ;-) : La Coquette, La Blonde, La Brune, La Sémillante, La Badine, La Belette, La Poulette

Plan made by the British in 1783, before main transformations, kept by the Greenwich NMMuseum

 

Plan analysis :

• Notice 10 portholes for 10 guns + a front port, empty, to be filled by the nearest gun during chasing,
• The 3 portholes on the quarterdeck don't belong to the French version of the ship but are part of the British conversion proposal,
• Hull with a flat bottom and substantial tumblehome as earlier in the 18th century (see La Renommée) 

 

Possible figurehead : a pair of Marmaids

Sculpture made by the Arsenal de Toulon (where the Corvette was built) in 1779 (same date) from Antoine Gibert's drawings for the 'frigate' (?) La Naïade
(186 x 55 x 68 cm) Paris, musée national de la Marine, Inv. 9 OA 17 [39 OA 16]

 

Sources :

Boudriot, Historique de la corvette, La Créole 1827, p. 26-27, 30

Boudriot, Neptunia n° 137, 1980

https://threedecks.org/index.php?display_type=show_ship&id=16595

Drawing of the hull : http://i68.servimg.com/u/f68/16/20/79/11/0410.jpg

Article about Corvettes by Surcouf : http://forum.game-labs.net/topic/7645-les-corvettes/?tab=comments#comment-144903

 

Edited September 29, 2017 by LeBoiteux

[Slim McSauce]

ayyyy french boobies

+1

[Barbancourt]

Need corvettes ++

[Lord Gud]

BOOBIES!!!!

[Barbancourt]

Hmmmm...from the crowd reaction this ship decorated as suggested (in glorious "HD") may sell 1,000,000 copies of Naval Action on its own. 

[Captain Armstrong]

What a fine corvette!

It would appear this class was revived by Coulomb in the early 1790s with the Babet and Prompte? Though the the later vessels seem to have slightly smaller dimensions their plans are extremely similar:

https://threedecks.org/index.php?display_type=show_class&id=531

Edited October 2, 2017 by Captain Armstrong

[LeBoiteux]

Indeed the same builder, J.-M.-B. Coulomb, made both the royalist Coquette class (in 1779-1781) and the French Revolution Prompte class (in 1793), both 20-gun corvettes, and achieved little innovation in the meantime (apart from the smallest dimensions of the latter). 

La Babet (1793)

Plan from NMM of Greenwich

Source (@Wagram) : http://forum.game-labs.net/topic/7348-sélection-de-navires-1er-semestre-2016/?do=findComment&comment=139085

 

Dimensions (pieds du Roi) : 112 x 28, 6 x 14, 4

Armament : 20 x 9-pdr

Sister ship : La Prompte

Sources (plans, info) :

• Boudriot, Historique de la Corvette, p. 34-36
• Demerliac., p.247
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Babet_(1794)

British armament = 22 (La Babet), 24 (La Prompte), 26 (La Naïade).

Edited October 3, 2017 by LeBoiteux

[LeBoiteux]

Capture of La Babet by the British in April 23rd 1794

http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/109622.html

 

http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/109625.html

 

Edited October 3, 2017 by LeBoiteux

[Captain Armstrong]

That second print is quite creative! Either the pomone or babet is shown with 3 tiers of quarter galleries 

overall, the type seems a well-documented and representative example of the quarterdecked french corvette (as opposed to flush decked examples like the Bonne Citoyenne or Diligente) 

I assume because the class was revived they had at least decent sailing qualities?