Wednesday 26 February 2014

Wednesday Welcome and Those Crazy French!

First the welcome to new follower Ed - I can't see a blog listed for you: do let me know if you have one, and I'll link to it.

Secondly, just a mention of an interesting website I've been reading this evening - BigBadBattleships - on French warship design, 1850-1916.  Pre-dreadnaughts are an interest of mine (some of them make aeronefs look sensible).

The Jemmapes (1892)

The Masséna (1898)
The Bouvet (1898) - tricky getting aboard!


11 comments:

  1. Thanks for the pre-dreadnaught website tip. I have an interest in the period too I look forward to perusing the website.

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    1. Glad it's of interest to you. You might want to consider joining the 'Historic Ship Geek' group on FaceBook - a lot of interesting and expert people there.

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    2. Alas, Edwin, I am not a Facebook member.

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  2. I don't know if you've already worked it out, but I had a play with that link to see if there were any more pages. If you replace the number in the link you'll also find pages for Germany (7), Italy (8), Austro-Hungary (9) and the Ottomans (11).

    One of our club members is very much into wargaming this era of naval warfare, so I've sent the links to him.

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    1. Yes, I realised that after posting - the home page is http://www.cityofart.net/bship/site_nav.html and includes a lot of interesting stuff about weapons, systems and some ironclad battles.

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  3. Interesting. Is this some inspiration behind the Dystopian Wars designs I wonder.
    Cheers

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  4. Quite fascinating. The section on freak ships includes the rather startling Russian circular design, which I had never seen before. Quite odd.
    The first time I tried the link in your post I got an adult "friend" finder site. Also quite odd.

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    1. Michael, the same thing happened to me when I first hit the link. I was shocked but couldn't duplicate the result. The link showed "big" and "bad" but certainly no battleships! The second attempt brought up the correct site.

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  5. What an absolutely wonderful link Edwin, there really are magnificent creations.

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  6. Thank you for both the link and the Facebook group. I also love the look of the French Pre-Dreadnoughts.

    The Russian circular coast defense ships are a thought experiment gone to far.
    The Adult Finder has happened to me on this site but not always.

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