Money ill spent

[Chuck~]

At the eve of WWI no one seriously question that German navy was number 2 in the world after the Royal Navy. French Navy is usually regarded as number 4 after RN, Highsea fleet, and USN. You can make a point about whether French Navy really was stronger than the next ones down, the Russian and Japanese navies.

Just 25 years before, the French Navy was number 2 in the world, the German navy 4 or 5, and the USN not to be found on anyone's list of serious navies.

What might surprise you is this, despite the fact that France was badly beaten in the naval built up from 1890-1915, France actually spent far more on her Navy during this period than either German or the US Navies. France spent 1.5 times more on her navy during this time than Germany did. France out spent the US by an even larger margin. In fact French naval spending was only fractionally lower than British naval spending during much of this period.

[kennylibben]

what did they do, spend it all on wine ?!

[Guest]

Each minister of marine had his own idea of how to restore French maritime greatness. Each minister of marine is convinced that only his idea were right and everyone else's ideas were wrong. So when a new minister of marine was appointed, he first ask for a lot of money to undo his predecessor's work. He then ask for more money to implement his own work. He would then be booted out of office before his work is done. His successor would then repeat the cycle.


BTW, French warships do have compartments called "wine store". It is the French equivalent to the "Sprit room" on British warships.

[Seasick]

The French Navy built quite a number of torpedo boats and vessels for their colonial fleets. Be careful of cost however cost that might be counted for one country might go be paid differently in other countries.

[JWintjes]

This is indeed an interesting phenomenon that has attracted quite some attention in the past - particularly if one compares the construction of the first dreadnoughts in France and Germany one will see that money rarely is an issue in France, while it's always an issue in Germany, with heavy battles raging in the Reichstag around the increases needed for financing eg the Von der Tann.

If I'm not totally mistaken, apart from the reason Chuck already mentioned another generally accepted opinion is that it was due to the staggering inability of French shipyards to build ships in a reasonable amount of time that they did not get that much for their money.

In all fairness one has to say that the Entente Cordiale, while on a strategic level of great importance to France, put the navy which had been built to a large extent to fight the RN in a tricky position.

Jorit

Jorit

[richter111]

If memory serves, both France and England had a pretty impressive submarine force at the onset of WWI

Ric