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 The French Navy (french: Marine nationale, lit=National Navy), informally , is the maritime arm of the French Armed Forces and one of the five military service branches of France. It is among the largest and most powerful naval forces in th ...

for the post-

Empire An empire is a "political unit" made up of several territories and peoples, "usually created by conquest, and divided between a dominant center and subordinate peripheries". The center of the empire (sometimes referred to as the metropole) ex ...

era. Presided by

Jacques-Noël Sané Jacques-Noël Sané (18 February 1740, Brest – 22 August 1831, Paris) was a French naval engineer. He was the conceptor of standardised designs for ships of the line and frigates fielded by the French Navy in the 1780s, which served during the ...

, the Commission comprised Jean-Marguerite Tupinier, Pierre Rolland, Pierre Lair and Jean Lamorinière. The works of the Commission led to the design of double-decked 24-pounder frigates, as well as to four ranks of ships of the line: the 120-gun ( ''Valmy'' being the lone unit built to the design), the 100-gun ''Hercule'' class, the 90-gun ''Suffren'' class, and an 80-gun type whose only ship ever started, ''Tour d’Auvergne'', was never launched. These ships of the line featured straight sides instead of the traditional

tumblehome Tumblehome is a term describing a hull which grows narrower above the waterline than its beam. The opposite of tumblehome is flare. A small amount of tumblehome is normal in many naval architecture designs in order to allow any small projectio ...

design that had prevailed until then; this tended to heighten the ships' centre of gravity, but provided much more room for equipment in the upper decks. Stability issues were fixed with underwater stabilisers. However, they proved difficult to build in a tight financial context; the resulting lengthy construction limited the useful lifetime of the ships, compounded with their quick obsolescence caused by the introduction of the

Paixhans gun The Paixhans gun (French: ''Canon Paixhans'', ) was the first naval gun designed to fire explosive shells. It was developed by the French general Henri-Joseph Paixhans in 1822–1823. The design furthered the evolution of naval artillery into th ...

steam engine A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid. The steam engine uses the force produced by steam pressure to push a piston back and forth inside a cylinder. This pushing force can be ...

s and armour plating.

History

During the

First French Empire The First French Empire, officially the French Republic, then the French Empire (; Latin: ) after 1809, also known as Napoleonic France, was the empire ruled by Napoleon Bonaparte, who established French hegemony over much of continental ...

, the French Navy was organised into three types of ships of the line: the 118-gun three-deckers of the ''Océan'' class and their ''Commerce de Paris''-class derivatives, which constituted the capital ships that led naval squadrons; the powerful 80-gun two-deckers of the ''Tonnant'' class and their ''Bucentaure''-class derivatives, constituting the backbone of the squadrons; and 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 ...

workhorses of the ''Téméraire'' class.Les vaisseaux de la commission de Paris (1824)
Nicolas Mioque On the side of frigates, the design had stabilised on

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 of 44 guns, despite numerous attempts to increase the calibre of the main battery to 24-pounders as examplified in particular by the ''Forte'' class.La frégate USS Constitution à Cherbourg (1811)
Nicolas Mioque In 1818, Portal d'Albarèdes was appointed Minister of the Navy of the recently restored Monarchy. In 1821, he gathered a Commission to prepare new designs for the ships of the French Navy. In 1822, Tupinier published his ''Observations sur les dimensions des Vaisseaux et Frégates de la Marine française'', recommending that the ''Océan'' class be retained as capital ship, and that two ranks of two-deckers be adopted: one carrying 102 guns, and the other 96. The number of capital ships needed was determined to be ten.La fin du Trocadéro, vaisseau de 1er rang (1836)
Nicolas Mioque

Notes and references

Notes

References

Bibliography

* * * {{Cite book, first=Jean , last=Tupinier , author-link=Jean Tupinier, year=1822 , place=Paris, title=Observations sur les dimensions des Vaisseaux et Frégates de la Marine française , url=https://books.google.com/books?id=u0MIcgAACAAJ

External links

Les vaisseaux de la commission de Paris (1824)
Nicolas Mioque History of the French Navy Ship design