Ruelle Foundry
The Ruelle Foundry or fonderie de Ruelle is a cannon foundry which was established in 1753. Since then, it has played a major role in providing weapons for the French Armed Forces. As cannons fell out of popular use, the foundry evolved to specialize in producing guided missiles. It is now part of Naval Group.
Context
The Touvre
was chosen as the site of a gun foundry because of the river Touvre, a short tributary of the Charente, which it joins on the outskirts of Angoulême. The location of the river provided access to both hydropower and weapons transport.The Touvre is fed by four springs known as the Sources de la Touvre. These springs well up from the Karst aquifers of La Rochefoucauld. The small rivers Tardoire and Bandiat, both about 100 km long, disappear into the Karst and later resurge to create the Touvre.
While short in length, a significant volume of water runs through the Touvre. During the summer, it actually discharges more water than the Charente itself. This high volume of discharge makes the river a reliable source of hydropower varying between 127 and 415 hp, depending on the season. Even in 1870, this was enough to move all the machinery that the factory and its 400 employees used. Because the Karst aquifers that feed the Touvre never freeze, the river is a reliable source of power year round.
The Charente becomes a navigable river after the Touvre joins it at L'Houmeau, a town quarter and the inland port of Angoulême. Before the advent of the railways, a navigable river was vital for a naval gun foundry. While it was possible to move naval guns over land, the heavy cast iron from which they were forged made it a very costly affair.
Charcoal and iron
Ruelle was also an attractive site for a foundry due to the proximity of useful mineral deposits. At Ruelle, most of the iron ore came from nearby Périgord. There were also many forests nearby. These provided the charcoal which provided the heat for the metallurgical processes.History
Up to the 1840s
Until the mid-18th century, what is now the foundry was the site of a paper mill. In June 1723, Claude-André de la Tache and his wife bought the paper mill from the Lord of Ruelle. In June 1750, Marc René, marquis de Montalembert and his brother, the Chevalier de Monalembert, bought the paper mill from André de la Tache and Jean-André de la Boissière, who held it as a fief from the lord of Ruelle. The price was a perpetual rent of 365 livres a year. On the foundations of the paper mill, the marquis established a foundry for casting large cannons. In 1752, he received a permit to cut down 4,800 arpents of forest over a period of nine years in the woods of Braconne, northeast of Ruelle.In 1755, the French government took possession of the foundry. The Marquise de Montalembert fought for recognition of his rights as lord of the foundry for 16 years before eventually succeeding on 20 September 1772. However, the government immediately forced him to rent it out to the state for 20,000 livres a year, plus a sum for the previous expropriation. In 1774, the Marquis d'Artois bought the lordship over the foundries of Ruelle and Forge-Neuve for 300,000 livres. In this transaction, the machinery and other movable possessions of the companies were valued at 60,000 livres.
In 1776, the king of France took possession of both foundries. In return, he gave the count of Artois three forests in the Champagne region: those of Vassy, Saint-Dizier, and Sainte-Menehould. This was a very profitable trade for the counts. After the state took control, the foundry was first managed by directors, later by businessmen who rented the mill from the state. The underlying perpetual rent of 365 livres was paid up until 1790.
During the French Revolution and the wars that followed, the foundry was very busy. Many scientists and civil servants with very strong mandates directed the foundry. Ruelle was entirely renovated. It got two reverberatory furnaces, halls where the cannons were cast, and new installations to bore the cannons. This period saw a change from casting directly from the blast furnaces to casting from a reverbatory furnace.
In 1840, the bronze gun foundry and boring facility of Rochefort was transferred to Ruelle. In 1846, a chemical laboratory was established. Up to 1866, the facilities at Ruelle were continuously updated and changed, as many major foreign heavy industries were during that period.
Modern Artillery
What is now considered to be modern artillery resulted from developments that took place in the mid-to-late 19th century. At the time, several improvements in underlying technologies such as metallurgy and chemistry converged to create new possibilities. It led to the construction of breech-loading rifled cannons that could fire at a much greater muzzle velocity than the traditional smoothbore muzzleloaders. In France, these weapons were first made of cast iron.Cast iron rifled guns
For the early 1850s, some production numbers are known. In 1852, Ruelle produced 112 30-pounders; in 1853, 85; and in the first half of 1854, 121 30-pounders, 12 50-pounders, and 213 iron coastal gun carriages. Many of these guns were produced for the Crimean War, which started in October 1853 and lasted till March 1856.All of these guns were traditional smoothbore muzzleloaders, except for the new 50-pounder gun that was tested in 1845. The latter was an example of another development, the construction of very heavy smoothbore muzzleloaders. The 50-pounder was a regular gun that actually fired a bullet weighing 50 pounds. Previously tested models were 60- or 80-pdr shell guns that fired a much lighter-weight shot that only had the circumference of a 60 or 80 pound bullet.
The first rifled guns of the French Navy were the 16 cm modèle 1855 gun and the modèle 1858-1860 guns. Most of the modèle 1858-1860 guns were smoothbore muzzleloaders changed to rifled guns. Only one of the seven modèle 1858-1860 guns was a breechloader. These rifled guns fired an ogive-shaped projectile of about twice the weight of the spherical bullet. The increased weight of the projectile and charge necessitated the use of steel hoops, which were shrunk onto the barrel.
The M 1864-1866 family of guns consisted of new designs. These guns were all breech loaders. They used a more rational way of hooping, had a screw breech loading system, and proper obturation. They fired a projectile three times the weight of the spherical projectile.
When the mid to late-1860s description of the Ruelle facilities was made, they were busy producing the M 1864-1866 guns. At the time, the smaller calibers and the Canon de 24 C modèle 1864 were in production, while the Canon de 27 C modèle 1864 had not yet been approved. The description was accompanied by a series of engravings of the model 1864 guns as they were produced. These were centered on the 24 cm gun and showed images of its barrel before and after it was hooped, of its trunnion ring, and of its breech block and obturator.
The model 1864 was followed by the model 1870 guns. These were built-up guns with a short steel inner tube inside the cast iron core. A visiting American delegating gave a description of how the guns were cast at Ruelle, but also noted that the use of cast-iron was no longer practical.
Assembly and finishing of steel guns
The lost 1870-1871 Franco-Prussian War led to big changes in the French armament industry. The manufacture of guns had been long been organized by state companies. These were Ruelle and Nevers for the navy; and Bourges, Puteaux and Tarbes for the army. This system was no longer practical, especially as cast iron fell out of favor and production began to switch to cast steel.Making large, all-steel guns required massive forgings. To encourage private industry, the French government invested in forging equipment, such as large steam hammers. A new division of labour was developed, in which only Compagnie des forges et aciéries de la marine et d'Homécourt at Saint-Chamond and Schneider et Cie at Le Creusot cast the all-steel barrels for guns of a caliber higher than 16 cm. Government installments, like Ruelle, machined and assembled these guns. For foundry work, the government depended on private industry.
For big steel naval guns, Ruelle became the sole assembly and finishing plant. The factory at Nevers was closed down in 1880. Its inventory and employees were moved to Ruelle. Ruelle's new role required the design and setup of what was effectively a new plant. It took about five years to build. The heavy machinery was made by Varall, Elwell & Middleton. A 100-ton hydraulic crane to load guns into barges was made by Fives-Lille, which also made a 120-ton railway truck.
A late 1880s overview of production of the steel model 1881 guns describes the following chain of production: The steel corps or main body came from Creusot or Saint-Chamond, or occasionally from the Firth. The steel frettes or rings, which had never been made by Ruelle, came also from Saint-Chamond, Saint Etienne, and Creusot. The breech pieces came from Saint Chamond, Saint-Etienne, and Saint Ouen. The inner tubes were made by Saint Chamond, on the Firth, and probably at Ruelle.