I think I've figured out the design brief for the French Battleships of the 1890's. "Build us something the damned English won't want to steal if we go to war against them".
Driftless
Donor
I've often heard the extreme tumble-home designs had stability problems if they listed past a quickly arrived at point-of-no-return. If that's so, what was the primary appeal? The (problematic) ability to mounts broadside and near end-on firing guns (in the days before superfiring turrets?
It made the ships more stable at sea by concentrating the weight low down. If done right a French tumblehome battleship was more stable than one with flat sides at sea. That's if done right, and due to a number of factors many French ships wound up with too much weight up above, which acted as a lever and resulted in instability.
AIUI as the Count stated they are more stable than regular hull designs if all goes right. The stability problems appear when the ship gets damaged and starts to flood. Then it gets less stable than a standard hull design.
Oh! And also a tumblehome hull is more difficult to refit or add stuff into high up as such ships are more delicately balanced. So if you add say fire directors or wireless it can also make a very stable ship previously the opposite in short order
Also as the Russians found out the hard way, when they did take on water they quickly became unstable.
I've said it before - for all the well-deserved stick the flotte d'echantillons gets, even Massena and Carnot are good-looking ships when compared with Dupuy de Lome.
best looking warships go to probably British WW era Battleships. American ones come close second. French Battleships in general are just wack as hell.
Tiger, closely followed by Hood and post-refit Renown.
WW2-era, yes. WW1-era, with the cage masts, they're only an improvement on the French, albeit a long way clear.
Again, it depends on which war - Dunkerque and Richelieu look pretty good.
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Vanguard looked pretty good apart from having her grandmothers teeth.
French treaty battleships look good. Anything before that is ugly as sin.
true. French Ships towards the mid 20th century, started to look more normal.
I think the British and Italians are tied in terms of the looks of their ships. The American and German ships always seem rather masculine to me, big and brash. The French just seem to have gone all mad scientist with their ships.