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| Brest Arsenal | |
|---|---|
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| Location | |
| Location | France |
| Coordinates | 48°23′12″N4°29′48″W / 48.38667°N 4.49667°W |
The Brest Arsenal (French : arsenal de Brest) is a collection of naval and military buildings located on the banks of the river Penfeld, in Brest, France. [1]
The Penfeld, within the military enclosure, is almost wholly lined with quays, but ships cannot come directly alongside these quays because of heads of rock that are left exposed at low tide. That's why floating stages are moored fore and aft, mainly on the left bank, to make up postes where some “small” ships can come alongside and use some installations such as the large crane.
Little used upstream of the Pont de Recouvrance, downstream of this bridge these postes nevertheless serve the old sailing ships of the Navy, the tugboats and other support boats of the arsenal, and transrades, passenger ships which provide a service across the roadstead (rade de Brest) between Brest and the Crozon peninsula (Île Longue, École Navale)
A wharf, quay, staith, or staithe is a structure on the shore of a harbour or on the bank of a river or canal where ships may dock to load and unload cargo or passengers. Such a structure includes one or more berths, and may also include piers, warehouses, or other facilities necessary for handling the ships. Wharves are often considered to be a series of docks at which boats are stationed. A marginal wharf is connected to the shore along its full length.
Brest is a port city in the Finistère department, Brittany. Located in a sheltered bay not far from the western tip of a peninsula and the western extremity of metropolitan France, Brest is an important harbour and the second largest French military port after Toulon. The city is located on the western edge of continental France. With 139,456 inhabitants (2020), Brest forms Western Brittany's largest metropolitan area, ranking third behind only Nantes and Rennes in the whole of historic Brittany, and the 25th most populous city in France (2019); moreover, Brest provides services to the one million inhabitants of Western Brittany. Although Brest is by far the largest city in Finistère, the préfecture of the department is in the much smaller town of Quimper.
Rochefort, unofficially Rochefort-sur-Mer for disambiguation, is a city and commune in Southwestern France, a port on the Charente estuary. It is a subprefecture of the Charente-Maritime department, located in the administrative region of Nouvelle-Aquitaine.
The St Nazaire Raid or Operation Chariot was a British amphibious attack on the heavily defended Normandie dry dock at St Nazaire in German-occupied France during the Second World War. The operation was undertaken by the Royal Navy (RN) and British Commandos under the auspices of Combined Operations Headquarters on 28 March 1942. St Nazaire was targeted because the loss of its dry dock would force any large German warship in need of repairs, such as Tirpitz, sister ship of Bismarck, to return to home waters by running the gauntlet of the Home Fleet of the Royal Navy and other British forces, via the English Channel or the North Sea.
Naval Group is a major French industrial group specializing in naval defense design, development and construction. Its headquarters are located in Paris.
The Alsace class was a pair of fast battleships planned by the French Navy in the late 1930s in response to German plans to build two H-class battleships after the Second London Naval Treaty collapsed. The Alsace design was based on variants of the Richelieu class, and three proposals were submitted by the design staff. The proposed armament included nine or twelve 380 mm (15 in) guns or nine 406 mm (16 in) guns, but no choice was definitively made before the program ended in mid-1940. According to one pair of historians, logistical considerations—including the size of the 12-gun variant and the introduction of a new shell caliber for the 406 mm version—led the naval command to settle on the nine 380 mm design. But another pair of authors disagree, believing that the difficulty of designing and manufacturing a three-gun turret would have caused prohibitive delays during wartime, making the third, largest variant the most likely to have been built. The ships would have forced the French government to make significant improvements to its harbor and shipyard facilities, as the smaller Richelieus already stretched the limitations of existing shipyards. With construction of the first member of the class scheduled for 1941, the plan was terminated by the German victory in the Battle of France in May–June 1940.
Île Longue is a peninsula of the roadstead of Brest in the department of Finistère in the Brittany region. It is the base of the French nuclear ballistic missile submarines, and as such one of the most secretive and heavily defended places in France.
The roadstead of Brest is a roadstead or bay located in the Finistère department in Brittany in northwestern France. The surface area is about 180 km². The port of Brest and one of the two French naval bases, Brest Arsenal, are located on its northern edge. It is linked to the Atlantic Ocean by the Goulet de Brest, a strait about 1.8 km wide. Three main rivers drain into the roadstead: the Penfeld, the Élorn and the Aulne.
Île des Morts is a 7-hectare island in the Bay of Roscanvel, to the south-west of the roadstead of Brest, between the Quélern peninsula and Île Longue. It is 26m above sea level at its highest point.
Antoine Choquet de Lindu was a French architect and military engineer in the service of the French Navy
The Penfeld is a 16 km (9.9 mi) French coastal river. The town of Brest, in Finistère, has grown up on its left (east) bank.
The Pont de l’Harteloire is a bridge in Brest, France. Upstream of the Pont de Recouvrance, it connects the two banks of the river Penfeld and overlooks the arsenal de Brest. It is on the site the naval transporter bridge was destroyed during the Second World War.
The Pont de Recouvrance is a vertical-lift bridge in Brest, France, across the river Penfeld. Opened on 17 July 1954, it was the largest vertical-lift bridge in Europe until the opening of the Rouen Pont Gustave-Flaubert in 2008. It links the bottom of the rue de Siam to the quartier de Recouvrance, replacing a swing bridge destroyed by Allied bombardment in 1944.
The Château de Brest is a castle in Brest, Finistère, France. The oldest monument in the town, it is located at the mouth of the river Penfeld at the heart of the roadstead of Brest, one of the largest roadsteads in the world. From the Roman castellum to Vauban's citadel, the site has over 1700 years of history, holding right up to the present day its original role as a military fortress and a strategic location of the highest importance. It is thus the oldest castle in the world still in use, and was classified as a monument historique on 21 March 1923.
The military port of Toulon is the principal base of the French Navy and the largest naval base in the Mediterranean, situated in the city of Toulon. It holds most of France's force d'action navale, comprising the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle as well as its nuclear attack submarines, in total, the base contains more than 60% of the French Navy's tonnage, and about 20,000 military and civilian personnel work at the base.
The Bassin de la Villette is the largest artificial lake in Paris. It was filled with water on 2 December 1808. Located in the 19th arrondissement of the capital, it links the Canal de l'Ourcq to the Canal Saint-Martin, and it represents one of the elements of the Réseau des Canaux Parisiens, a public-works authority operated by the city. The other components of the network are the Canal de l'Ourcq, the Canal Saint-Denis, the Canal Saint-Martin, and the Bassin de l'Arsenal. Together, these canals and basins extend roughly 130 kilometres (81 mi).
Sheerness Dockyard was a Royal Navy Dockyard located on the Sheerness peninsula, at the mouth of the River Medway in Kent. It was opened in the 1660s and closed in 1960.
Cherbourg Naval Base is a naval base in Cherbourg Harbour, Cherbourg, Manche department, Normandy. The town has been a base of the French Navy since the opening of the military port in 1813.
The following is a timeline of the history of the city of Brest, France.
The Brest International Maritime Festival is a gathering of traditional boats from around the world, taking place for a week every four years in the city of Brest in France.
