Definition of a Frigate The ships that carried 60 guns and more were called ships of the line, because it was they alone that could stand in the line of battle when two fleets came into action. The first and second rates were three-deckers (that is to say they had three whole decks of guns, apart from those on the quarterdeck and forecastle); the third and fourth rates and the 44s were two-deckers; and the rest were one-deckers -- they were frigates from 38 guns down to 26, and post-ships when they carried 24 or 20. The word frigate was used in the seventeenth century without any very precise meaning, but by this time it had long been understood to mean a ship that carried her main armament on one deck and that was built for speed; the frigates were the eyes of the fleet, and they were also cruisers, capital for independent action.
A History of the Frigate During the late 1600's in the British fleet appeared a three-masted "light, nimble ship built with the purpose of sailing swiftly." Fast and powerful enough to capture merchantmen and elude heavier warships, she was called a frigate, a term derived from the earlier Italian fregata. The fregata had been a long, narrow merchant ship propelled by sails or oars and was common in the Mediterranean during the 16th and 17th centuries. Toward the end of the 18th century, the term "frigate" had crystallized. It identified a two-deck ship with the main, or gundeck, below the upper deck. which had no name until U.S. Navy sailors christened it the "spar deck."
In earlier times, British frigates were used to warn homeward-bound merchantmen and to escort convoys across the Atlantic and the North Sea. U.S. Navy frigates built during the 1790's were larger than the British ones. They were also principally employed for scouting and convoy duty.Frigate: A frigate is a war vessel of the 18th century. Though the frigate, because it was light and swift, was used primarily for reconnoitering and to relieve warships in distress, it was, nonetheless, a substantial war-vessel, next in size and equipment to ships of the line, "carrying from 28 to 60 guns on the main deck and a raised quarter-deck and forecastle."
Steam frigates began to displace sailing frigates in the 1850's and were in turn displaced by iron-clad ships during the Civil War. During World War II, the British revived the term frigate for escort vessels which were somewhat smaller than destroyers. Post war frigates of the U.S. Navy were developed to operate in severe weather conditions while coordinating the movements of other ships and aircraft in anti-submarine warfare operations.
RATINGS OF SHIPS
All rated ships (1st to 6th) were commanded by a POST CAPTAIN. Sloops, bombs, fire ships and ships armed en flute, that is a rated warship with some or all of its guns removed and used as a transport ship, were commanded by COMMANDERS. Smaller vessels like schooners and cutters were commanded by LIEUTENANTS. Sometimes a MASTER or a MIDSHIPMAN would command a very small vessel or a sloop used to carry stores. A LIEUTENANT, a MIDSHIPMAN or a MASTER`S MATE could be put in temporary command of a captured prize.SHIPS-OF-THE-LINE were those which were powerful enough to take their place in the line of battle. That is, a 3rd Rate or larger which carried guns on two or more decks. The rated ships smaller than this were known as FRIGATES and carried all their guns on a single upper deck.
TONNAGE. Either the capacity or the weight of a ship. A figure for tonnage is completely meaningless unless one knows which system of measurement is used. The term derives from `tun`, a cask of wine, and a ships BURTHEN or BURDEN was the number of tuns she could carry. This was also known as BUILDER`S MEASUREMENT or bm. The figure quoted for most ships up until the 1870`s will be bm, and can be calculated from :-
(L - 3/5B) x B x 1/2B where L = length in feet
bm = ----------------------- B = beam in feet
94Using this formula I believe that the size of the Winchelsea at 559 Tons would have been approximately 135 ft. x 30 ft. - yet from the records it's shown as 106' x 31'
Hammocks were introduced into the Navy in 1597 and replaced the practice of sleeping on the bare decks. Hammocks were slung on hooks from deck-beams at a regulation spacing of 14 inches (355 mm) per man. Stored in netting on the upper deck they also provided some protection from musket fire during battle. A hammock could also be used as a shroud for burial at seahttp://www.nmm.ac.uk/searchbin/searchs.pl?exhibit=it1278a&axis=966834422&flash=false
As shown in Thomas H. Raddall's book "Halifax - Warden of the North" - pg. 21 in regards to Ventilators....In view of the crowded state of the transports the Board took unusual sanitary precautions and installed ventilators with pumps to ensure a circulation of air below decks, a decided novelty in ships of that time. It was a triumph of naviagation and the newfangled ventilators, which the Admiralty later installed in all its ships on foreign service.
English Brown Oak Planking - One reason that English Brown Oak is so expensive it that it is very scarce. I believe that there was a blight that took out a lot of it some fifty years
ago and most of it was used up earlier for building ships. It takes over 100 years for an oak to reach a size that makes it usable for ship building. Of course in the days of the building of English War Ships, all of the prime oak trees belonged to the Crown. It was called "Polled Oak" because the tops were cut off in the forests so that "Wood Poachers" could not sight the forest from a high vantage point and pick out the Brown Oaks. After topping, these prime trees were marked with the "Kings Blaze". The penalty for taking one down, unauthorized, was death! Brown Oak is also a beautifully figured wood and is much sought after for making furniture and decorative carving. <Jay Greer>
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