Rank 5 ship

The introduction of the fifth (and sixth) rank in the middle of the XVII century is directly related to the appearance of frigates. This originally French type, then not yet established, however had two main signs: it was too weak to fight along with battleships , and fast enough for reconnaissance and patrol, independent cruising, or a coherent and messenger service. Mahan claims that even at Beachy Head , Turville had frigates, ^[1] but little is known about their appearance and weapons.

The first "true" frigate is the 26-gun French Médée ( 1741 ), designed and built in Brest by Blaise Ollivier ( French Blaise Ollivier ). Already in 1744, it fell into the hands of the British, but after the drawings were removed it was sold to a private owner. ^[2] She had all the signs of a classic frigate: three masts with direct armament , one battery deck, unarmed orlop deck, light cannons on the trench and tank.

As soon as the frigates appeared with the French, other countries appreciated them. England immediately began their construction. The British rank system, which appeared in 1677, defines rank 5 as ships with one battery deck of 26-30 cannons of 6 or 9 pound caliber. At the same time, the only battery deck (deck), like the battleship of the battleship, was not completely closed: in the bow and stern it overlapped completely, but on the waist there was a cutout - a boat well ( English well deck ), and on the sides above the guns scaffolds ( English . gangways ). On them (and on the tank and dowels ) there could be auxiliary weapons: guns of a smaller caliber, and from the 1780s carronades .

In this form, the frigate existed until the 1810s , when American (and at the same time French) shipbuilders introduced a continuous upper deck.

At the turn of the 18th - 19th centuries , three types of frigates belonged to rank 5: 32-gun, 36-gun, and 38-gun. During the Anglo-American War of 1812 , a 44-gun was added to them. Since the nominal number of ship’s guns could change during the course of service, the caliber of the main armament was still a semi-official method of assessing combat power. For example, they said "9 pound" or "12 pound" frigate.

By this time, the type of frigate had the prevailing signs: one battery deck, light weapons on the tank and dowels , and the unarmed lower deck (in the British fleet it was called eagle, in the American berth deck - English berth deck ). This last one was important because it gave a high gun-free board (about 7 feet ), which meant that it was possible to use the main battery in any weather. Many clashes with the battleships ended in a draw, and in some cases a victory, as in the winter storm of 1797 , when the 38-gun HMS Indefatigable brought to nothingness the 74-gun Droits de l'Homme , which could not open the lower ports.

12 pound frigate

In the French Navy, the appearance of a 12-pound frigate follows almost immediately after the appearance of an 8-pound frigate. ^[4] The prototype ship Hermione was launched in 1748. In Britain, a 12-fn frigate was adopted at the start of the Seven Years War in 1756 , and appeared in 32-gun and 36-gun versions. They both had twenty-six 12-fn guns, but the auxiliary weapons were six and ten 6-fn guns, respectively. New ships were considered a replacement for the previous 44-gun two-deckers, but having only one deck, in the eyes of some were too expensive by the criterion of firepower to displacement. As a result, only three 12-fn 36-gun ships were ordered ( Pallas class), and the displacement of 32-guns remained at the level of 700 tons for the entire 30 years that they were built. Excellent ships for their time, they mostly served for a long time. For example, the very first 32-gun, HMS Southampton , walked from 1757 until the crash in 1812 .

For the British Admiralty, the most important characteristic of cruising units, almost more important than for linear ones, was the number. Frigates were always lacking, and admirals more prone to drama claimed that they would go to the grave with the epitaph “few frigates”. ^{[3] [5] The} policy of downsizing made strategic sense, as it provided the maximum number of ships with a given budget. However, the meaning was preserved only in the conditions of British supremacy on the seas, when it was not forced to defend - at the level of the fleet, squadron, and even a separate ship. But the situation was different during the American Revolutionary War . Britain then ceded naval superiority to the combined forces of France, Holland, and the American colonies. The self-confidence gained by the French made them 12-fn frigates of 900 tons and a more serious opponent who threatened to completely suppress the small English frigates.

The war forced the Admiralty to reconsider its views, and quickly introduce three innovations. The first, perhaps most important, was copper plating , tested in 1761 on a 32-gun HMS Alarm . During the war, copper covered the entire cruising fleet. Thanks to this, time at sea increased without docking, but in fact - the number of ships available at each moment increased. In addition, it made them faster, and therefore more efficient. The second innovation was a carronade . Although with a smaller range, it had a larger projectile weight with the same gun weight. It was ideal for frigates, in which large sections of the superstructures were not armed, since it allowed to increase the weight of the volley with almost no loss in the number of long-barreled guns. The additional firepower largely restored the lost balance between the French and Spaniards on the one hand, and the British on the other.

The third innovation was a qualitative leap that arose with the advent of 18-fn frigates. Despite the stubbornness of the supporters of 44-gun two-decker ships, by 1783 the 18-fn frigate had taken a strong place in the fleet, and since then there have been no new orders for 12-pound. But there remained a few long programs from the past, and 18-fn frigates were still rare, so 12-fn dominated the fleet lists until the end of the French Revolutionary Wars .

The vast majority of replenishment among the 12-fn frigates were prizes. Some, of French or Spanish descent, matched British 18-fn. With the outbreak of war, the French built few such ships. One of the last was the Chiffonne , launched in 1795 in Nantes . Several were built in England, but there were no new projects: Thames 32-gun ships were a repetition of the 1756 HMS Richmond . Eight were ordered by the St. Vincent administration in 1804 , one later canceled. And the pine- built HMS Shannon and HMS Madison were originally conceived as 18-pound, but along the way the buildings were downgraded. By the 1790s , 18-fn caliber had become the norm.

18 pound frigate

18-pound frigates appeared in 1778 , when the Royal Navy's traditional numerical superiority was in jeopardy. They became an attempt to compensate for the quantitative deficiency due to the high firepower of an individual ship. HMS Minerva was the ancestor of the type of 38-gun frigates, and HMS Flora and HMS Perseverance 36-gun. They were very strong in the role of cruisers, and for a short time had no equivalent in other fleets.

Like many British ships of the time, they were too small for the installed battery, and subsequent projects tended to increase the gaps between the guns in the battery deck , reducing their number by 2. In addition, it was believed that the French frigates were faster, and therefore the relative elongation and absolute length, contrary to the short hulls, so beloved at British shipyards for strength and maneuverability.

This policy, adopted by the Admiralty under Lord Spencer , resulted in rapid changes in design and a large number of single, experimental ships, so that the standard type of 18-pound frigate did not work out for the Amiens world . Moreover, in 1801, the First Lord of St. Vincent , following the belief that the increase in size was wasteful, returned to the construction of small ships.

“Large” or “heavy” frigate ^[6]

The United States was the first to build super-frigates armed with a main battery of 24-pound guns. There were several reasons for this. Firstly, in that era they did not have a large fleet, and they had no battleships at all. When Congress , with great creak, approved the construction of new ships, they tried to make them individually stronger than the equivalent ship of any other country. Secondly, due to its small size, the USA had the opportunity to invest in each of the ships the best - and much more expensive - materials, without worrying about saving them. Finally, apart from purely practical considerations, it was also a matter of prestige.

The most famous of these is the USS Constitution . It was his thick and durable case, generously made from the best, long-term aging of oak, that earned him the nicknameEnglish Old Ironsides - the nuclei simply bounced off of it where other frigates completely penetrated. ^[6]

Since the start of the Revolutionary War of 1793, there have been rumors of large 24-fn frigates remade by the French from battleships by cutting one deck. In French, the type was called rasée , that is, “shaved”, “cut off”. They inspired Humphries to create the Constitution class. In 1794 , the British cut three old 64-guns: HMS Anson , HMS Magnanime and HMS Indefatigable , preserving the main battery.

The successes of American frigates pushed the Admiralty to build something larger than the standard "large" 38-gun 18-fn frigate. The new ships, led by HMS Endymion and HMS Acasta , were large by British standards (1,200 and 1,100 tons, respectively), but still noticeably inferior to 1,500-ton American.

The British frigates did not give the desired return on such serious costs. They were deemed too expensive and not profitable enough for their size. Of all the frigates, they were most susceptible to a constructive problem. 24-fn guns not only loosened the case. It was found that they are difficult to maintain on the roll deck of the frigate. In the British Navy, the opinion was firmly established that the superiority of the 24-fn battery is not so great, which led at first to the underestimation of the American 44-gun opponents. At the same time, sailors lost sight of the fact that a heavy battery will show itself much better on a large, more stable platform.

Among all the "super-frigates" of the 1790s, Endymion became a star. He was very fast, good at steering, and could carry 24-guns if necessary. He was so good that he served as a model even for experimental squadrons of the 1830s . Two roughly similar ships were the captured Forte and L'Egyptienne . The first was lost so quickly that they did not have time to draw drawings from it. The second, captured in Alexandria in 1801 , turned out to be so weak in corps that after 1807 it was transferred to raid service. So when the search for a counterweight to the American successes of 1812-1813 began , we naturally remembered Endymion . He himself was not ready at sea immediately, because he needed to repair “between medium and large”, but at the end of it in May 1813 he was armed with an initial 24-fn battery and went to the North American station . Meanwhile, 40-gun frigates began to be made from him as the only prototype. With only 26 ports on the battery deck, he, unlike American projects, did not carry cannons capable of firing forward. Therefore, in subsequent ships managed to squeeze 28 ports.

The pine construction made the hull easier and harder as a result. But in this case, it allowed to carry a large load, that is, it turned out to be an advantage. The battery decks from this were cramped, but the ships did not have stability problems. After refinement, they became excellent walkers, albeit not like the Endymion itself. By mid-January 1813, five were ordered; three were planned to be available by July. All were built at the shipyard of Sir Robert Wigram, and made up the type of nominally 40-gun. The lead was HMS Forth .

Despite the speed of construction from the pine, the Admiralty wanted an even more rapid reaction. The obvious step was to revive the rasée type. Admiral Sir John Borlaz Warren, commander of the North American station in January, requested a restructuring of the Six-Seven Fast Linear. For once, the Admiralty was pleased to announce that it had foreseen a request and was already operating. In fact, the proposal of Captain Hayes of November 1812 was being implemented. According to the initial plan, he proposed to rebuild the 64-guns, but by that time they were all too worn out, and there were few of them in reserve. Instead, the Admiralty decided to cut the fast 74-gun from the "ordinary", and chose three: HMS Majestic , HMS Goliath , HMS Saturn , which saved them from the inglorious role of floating prisons.

Perestroika itself was little reminiscent of 1794. These rasées had no boat wells, and were officially considered "intermediate between the frigate and the linear." There was a noticeable ute with tablets, the main battery of twenty-eight 32-fn cannons, and on the continuous upper deck there were as many 42-fn carronades installed in a new way: on skids with a kingpin, which was intended to reduce recoil and accelerate reloading.

Despite the fact that the frigates were built under two main roles: reconnaissance for the fleet and independent cruising, they turned out to be so universal that they were found everywhere and everywhere: in the blockade, in the defense of trade, with the support of landings, as flying squads during the pursuit, and even, for stronger, in advanced battles with the goal of forging and delaying battleships. It often happened that the frigate was a senior at a remote station or the flagship of a convoy.

In terms of use, the appearance of the 18-fn frigate made his 12-fn fellow second-class. But such was the 18-pound shortage that some of the "smaller brothers" found themselves in key roles. Warren's elite squadron in the mid- 1790s included HMS Concorde Strachan - a large 12-fnl, 36-gun frigate, formerly French. Such ships remained popular due to their excellent driving performance, although they were considered too fragile for the burdens of the near blockade. In general, they were less popular for service with the fleet, especially when they began to look at the frigates as a means of fettering them with battle, for example, when Strechen destroyed the Dumanuman squad after the Battle of Trafalgar .

In the course of the war, with the advent of large numbers of 18-pound frigates, a tendency arose to transfer 12-pound to distant, insignificant stations. Some ended up in the North Sea , traditionally an orphan among others, but more and more came to the East and especially to the West Indies , where they were still stronger than any privat — the traditional threat to trade.

The idea of ​​a "super-frigate" (a special building or rasée ) has found many supporters outside of England. The very first and most consistent were the United States . France, too, willingly followed this path. All these changes gave a tangible effect after 1815 .

But the introduction of a solid upper deck and the installation of a full battery on it (it is believed that the USS Constitution was the first to arm it in 1814 ) mixed the traditional differences between the frigate and the two-decker ship.

Very little time passed, and similar ships appeared in Turkey , Austria , Sweden and Denmark , and a little later than Russia . They began to talk about "two-day frigates." Designations by the number of guns did not help either: heavy bombing guns appeared , firing explosive shells, and long-range rifled guns, but due to the enormous weight of the ship it could carry them correspondingly less. In the 1840s , a noticeable erosion of the frigate type was already observed. Other ships began to be included in rank 5.

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