''Pluton'' was a
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 ...
French ship 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 tactics in the Age of Sail, naval tactic known as the line of battl ...
built at
Toulon
Toulon (, , ; , , ) is a city in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region of southeastern France. Located on the French Riviera and the historical Provence, it is the prefecture of the Var (department), Var department.
The Commune of Toulon h ...
. She was one of two prototypes for a derivative sub-class of the original design; this sub-class (slightly smaller than the primary design) was specially intended for construction in some of the shipyards in states occupied by the French, where there was less depth of water than in the main French shipyards. Although the ''Pluton'' (and her sister, the
''Borée'') were built at Toulon, all other vessels of this sub-class were built in these overseas yards, notably at Antwerp but also at Genoa, Trieste, Venice, Amsterdam, Flushing and Rotterdam.
The ''Pluton'' took part in the
Battle of Trafalgar
The Battle of Trafalgar was a naval engagement that took place on 21 October 1805 between the Royal Navy and a combined fleet of the French Navy, French and Spanish Navy, Spanish navies during the War of the Third Coalition. As part of Na ...
under Captain
Julien Cosmao-Kerjulien, and escaped to
Cádiz
Cádiz ( , , ) is a city in Spain and the capital of the Province of Cádiz in the Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Andalusia. It is located in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula off the Atlantic Ocean separated fr ...
with other ships. Two days later, on 23 October 1805, she was the flagship of
the counter-attack from Cádiz, together with , , and . They managed to recapture the and . To prevent their recapture, the British scuttled the and . ''Rayo'' and ''San Francisco de Asis'' were wrecked on their journey back.
She
was captured by Spain in Cadiz on 14 June 1808 and commissioned in the Spanish Navy as ''Pluton''. She was renamed ''Montañes'' on 20 April 1810, and was eventually broken up in 1816.
See also
*
List of ships of the line of France
This is a list of French ships of the line of the period 1621–1870 (plus some from the period before 1621). Battlefleet units in the French Navy (''Marine Royale'' before the French Revolution established a republic) were categorised as ''vais ...
Citations
References
*
* Winfield, Rif & Roberts, Stephen S. ''French Warships in the Age of Sail 1786–1861: Design, Construction, Careers and Fates''. Seaforth Publishing, 2015. .
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pluton (1804)
Ships of the line of the French Navy
Ships built in France
Téméraire-class ships of the line
1805 ships