Leon Trionfante-class ship of the line

The Leon Trionfante-class were a class of at least fourteen 70-gun third rate ships of the line built by the Venetian Arsenale from 1716 to 1785, in four different series with minor changes in the ships' length. Almost all the ships of this class were planned and started before 1739, completed to a 70%, then stored in the roofed shipbuilding docks of the Arsenale to be finished and launched when the Venetian Navy need them, a solution the Royal Navy adopted only in 1810, when the docks at Chatham were covered.

This decision, mostly due to the chronic lack of funds of the Serenissima in his last period, led the maintenance in service of older and inferior ships than the ones built at the same time for the British Royal Navy and the French Navy. Moreover, contemporary third rates had heavier guns (32-pounders on the gun deck and 18-pounders on the upper gun deck), even if the armament of those ships could be brought up to 72-74 guns. Excepting the Leon Trionfante and the Diligenza, none of this class' ships remained in service for more than fifteen years.

In 1797, when Venice fell to the French, Napoleon captured several ships of the class, still unfinished in the Arsenal: he chose one of them, forced the shipbuilders to have it completed and added it to his fleet en route for Egypt. After Campoformio, the remaining vessels were destroyed by the French to avoid their capture by the Austrian Empire.

Ships

Notes

• Even if by contemporary Royal Navy practice these 70-gun ships should be rated as third rates, for the Venetian Navy the Leon Trionfante-class were first rate vessels. This different classification dated back to the previous century, but Venice never changed it for prestige issues.
• The guns reported as the main armament of this class' ships are the result of a conversion from the Venetian scale, that use the libbra sottile (0,301 kg), to the British one. For the Venetian Navy, those ships had 28 40-pounders guns in the gun deck, 28 20-pounders guns in the upper gun deck and 14 14-pounders guns on the quarterdeck and the forecastle.

References

• Guido Ercole, Vascelli e fregate della Serenissima, GMT, Trento, 2011.

See also

• Venetian Navy
• Arsenal of Venice
• Venetian bombardments of the Beylik of Tunis (1784–88)