Name Hoche Ordered 3 August 1880 Decommissioned April 1908 Weight 12,150 tons Draft 7.9 m Builder Lorient | Namesake Lazare Hoche Completed 1890 Length 98 m Launched 29 September 1886 Beam 20 m | |
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Nickname(s) "le Grand Hôtel" ("Grand Hotel") | ||
The French ironclad Hoche was an early ironclad battleship of the French Navy. She used the 340mm/28 Modèle 1881 gun as her main armament, like the Marceau class which followed. Hoche was completed with a heavy but unarmoured superstructure that resulted in her being top heavy. This was later lightened.
Service history
In 1892, off Marseilles, Hoche collided with the steamer Maréchal Canrobert which sank with the loss of 107 lives.
In a refit lasting from September 1894 to April 1895, the eighteen 138mm guns were replaced by twelve of a newer model, which were faster-firing, and the aft armoured mast was replaced with a pole mast. From 1899 to 1902, a major refit replaced the engines and boilers, replacing the single large stack with two smaller side-by-side stacks, and removed large portions of the superstructure.
Hoche was decommissioned and placed in reserve in April 1908, and disarmed on 1 January 1910. She was sunk as practice target by the French battleship Jauréguiberry and the armoured cruiser Pothuau on 2 December 1913.