French cruiser Gueydon


The French cruiser Gueydon was the name ship of her class of armoured cruisers built for the French Navy in the 1890s.

Design and description

Designed by the naval architect Emile Bertin, the Gueydon-class ships were intended to fill the commerce-raiding strategy of the Jeune École. They measured long overall with a beam of and had a draught of. Gueydon displaced. The ship had a crew of 566 officers and enlisted men.
The Gueydon class had three vertical triple-expansion steam engines, each driving a single propeller shaft. Steam for Gueydons engines was provided by 28 Niclausse boilers and they were rated at a total of that gave them a speed of. The ships enough coal to steam for at a speed of.
The Gueydons had a main armament that consisted of two 40-caliber Canon de 194 mm Modèle 1893-1896| guns that were mounted in single gun turrets, one each fore and aft of the superstructure. Their secondary armament comprised eight 45-caliber quick-firing Canon de Modèle 1893 guns in casemates. For anti-torpedo boat defense, they carried four 45-caliber QF Canon de Modèle 1891 guns on the forecastle deck, as well as ten QF QF 3-pounder Hotchkiss| and four QF Hotchkiss guns. They were also armed with two submerged torpedo tubes.
The Harvey armor belt of the Gueydon-class cruisers covered most of the ships' hull. The lower strake of armor was generally thick, although it reduced to forward, aft. The curved lower protective deck ranged in thickness from. The gun turrets were protected by armor and had roofs thick.

Construction and career

Gueydon was named in honour of Louis Henri de Gueydon, first governor of Algeria under the 3rd Republic. She was commissioned in Toulon harbour in 1903, and undertook a first campaign to East Asia. She took part in the First World War, supervising patrols in Southern America and in the Caribbean.
In 1923, she was refitted in Brest harbour. In 1926, she was again modified to serve as a gunnery school; she entered this role the following year, replacing the armoured cruiser Pothuau in Brest.
In 1941, her hull was used by the Germans to form the basis for a decoy-dummy of the Prinz Eugen.
The hulk of Gueydon was bombed by aircraft from the RAF's 617 Squadron on 13 and 14 August 1944, along with the other hulks at Brest, to prevent them from being used by the Germans as blockships. The wreck was broken up after the end of the war.