Magenta early in her career
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History | |
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France | |
Name | Magenta |
Builder | Toulon |
Laid down | 18 January 1883 |
Launched | 19 April 1890 |
Commissioned | 1 July 1892 |
Decommissioned | 28 October 1907 |
In service | 29 October 1893 |
Stricken | 6 May 1909 |
Fate | Sold, 1911 |
General characteristics | |
Class and type | Marceau-class ironclad |
Displacement | 10,680 long tons (10,850 t) |
Length | 98.6 m (323 ft 6 in) lpp |
Beam | 20.06 to 20.19 m (66 to 66 ft) |
Draft | 8.23 to 8.43 m (27 ft 0 in to 27 ft 8 in) |
Installed power |
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Propulsion | |
Speed | 16 knots (30 km/h; 18 mph) |
Complement | 643–651 |
Armament |
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Armor |
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Magenta was an ironclad barbette ship of the French Navy built in the 1880s and early 1890s. She was the third and final member of the Marceau class. The Marceau class was based on the earlier Amiral Baudin class of barbette ships, but with smaller guns: four 340 mm (13.4 in) weapons compared to the three 420 mm (16.5 in) guns of the earlier vessels. The ships introduced the lozenge arrangement for their main battery that became common for many French capital ships built in the 1890s. Magenta and her sister ships suffered from a number of problems, including poor stability, insufficient armor protection, and excessive displacement.
Magenta, completed in 1893, had a relatively short and uneventful career, which she spent in the Mediterranean Squadron conducting training exercises. New pre-dreadnought battleships began to enter service in the mid-1890s, which displaced the Marceaus to the Reserve Division, where they were used as training ships. Magenta and her sisters were scheduled to be modernized with new water-tube boilers in the early 1900s, but by the time the new boilers were delivered, ironclads like the Marceaus were obsolete, and so no work was carried out. She thereafter returned to training duties before being struck from the naval register in 1909. She was sold to ship breakers in 1911.