Cherbourg Naval Base

Cherbourg Naval Base is one of the three naval bases of metropolitan France, alongside Brest and Toulon, and is operated by the French Navy. It lies within Cherbourg Harbour on the northern coast of the Cotentin Peninsula, in the Manche department of Normandy, facing the English Channel.

The base occupies 120 hectares and commands a force of some thirteen vessels. Operational responsibility for the surveillance of the English Channel and the North Sea rests with the Channel Flotilla (Flomanche); the base lost its former standing as a port of registry with the departure of the Flotilla of the North (FLONOR). Cherbourg homeports Flamant-class patrol vessels, namely Flamant, Pluvier and Cormoran, and the radiological surveillance swift boat Coralline. Support and auxiliary craft assigned include the RPC12 tugs Fréhel and Saire, the mine clearance diving support vessel Vulcain, the diving support swift boats Acanthe and Magnolia, and the support vessel Élan. The Maritime Gendarmerie patrol boats Athos and Aramis are also based there. Other vessels present at the port include the chartered salvage tug Abeille Liberté and the Affaires maritimes patrol boat Thémis.

The Cherbourg Arsenal, the shipbuilding component of the installation, specialises in submarine construction. It builds nuclear-powered boats for the French Navy, including the Triomphant class and the Suffren class, and conventionally powered diesel-electric submarines for export, such as the Scorpène type. Two masonry basins serve the yard: the Charles X basin, measuring 420 by 200 metres with a depth of 18 metres, and the Napoleon III basin, measuring 290 by 220 metres at the same depth. Since 2000, in response to declining naval requirements, the arsenal has been opened to private industry, with 50,000 square metres of land in its northern part leased to the Euriware secure management centre and to the Ican shipyard, the latter building service boats.

Cherbourg had no military port before the 18th century. Louis XVI ordered the creation of a first-class arsenal on the Cotentin Peninsula to give the fleet access to the Channel comparable to that afforded by Brest on the Atlantic, and work on a breakwater to shelter the roadstead began in the 1780s to designs by Louis-Alexandre de Cessart. Work resumed in 1803 under Napoleon Bonaparte, the engineer Joseph Cachin building the military port west of the town; its avant-port opened on 27 August 1813, and the arsenal was established on the same site. The breakwater was completed in 1853.