Pre-Dreadnought Battleships: Liberté Class

[Brian James]

Soldiers pictured disembarking from Liberté Class Pre-Dreadnought Battleship Vérité during the Allied landings at Gallipoli, 1915.

[designeraccd]

The 3 steps in LIBERTE's career......... DFO

[Brian James]

Lead Ship, Pre-Dreadnought Battleship Liberté pictured on completion departing Saint Nazaire for Arsenal de Brest to have her armament installed on September 5th 1907...At 05:31 on the morning of September 25th 1911, crewmen in other Battleships reported seeing smoke coming from Liberté, originating from her forward starboard casemate. Shortly thereafter, the forward superstructure erupted in flames, but it quickly appeared to observers that the ship's crew was getting the fire under control. At 05:53 a tremendous explosion aboard Liberté rocked the harbour. The ship was badly damaged by the blast, with both central 194 mm turrets thrown overboard, the deck amidships collapsed, and the forward 180 ft of the ship completely destroyed. The forward 305 mm turret was blasted apart, and only one of the guns was recovered, having been hurled into the muddy bottom of the harbour The explosion threw a 37-metric-ton (36-long-ton) chunk of armor plate from the ship into the Battleship République moored some 690 ft away, which caused significant damage. Splinters from the exploding ship sank a steam pinnace and killed fifteen men aboard the Armoured Cruiser Marseillaise, nine aboard the Battleship Saint Louis, six aboard the Armoured Cruiser Léon Gambetta, four aboard the Battleship Suffren, and three aboard Démocratie. Liberté's surviving crew immediately fled the ship; 286 were killed in the explosion and 188 were wounded. Fortunately, 143 of the crew, including the ship's commander, had been on leave in Toulon at the time and thus avoided the accident. The ensueing investigation concluded that the culprit was unstable Poudre B, a nitrocellulose-based propellant.