Rating system of the Royal Navy - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The rating system of the Royal Navy and its predecessors was used by the British Royal Navy between the beginning of the 17th century and the middle of the 19th century to categorise sailing warship

Warship

A warship is a ship that is built and primarily intended for combat. Warships are usually built in a completely different way from merchant ships. As well as being armed, warships are designed to withstand damage and are usually faster and more maneuvrable than merchant ships...

s, initially classing them according to their assigned complement of men, and later according to the number of their carriage-mounted guns.

Origins and description

The first movement towards a rating system may be seen in the 15th century and the first half of the 16th century, when the largest carrack

Carrack

A carrack or nau was a three- or four-masted sailing ship developed in 15th century Western Europe for use in the Atlantic Ocean. It had a high rounded stern with large aftcastle, forecastle and bowsprit at the stem. It was first used by the Portuguese , and later by the Spanish, to explore and...

s in the Navy (such as the Mary Rose
Mary Rose
The Mary Rose was a carrack-type warship of the English Tudor navy of King Henry VIII. After serving for 33 years in several wars against France, Scotland, and Brittany and after being substantially rebuilt in 1536, she saw her last action on 1545. While leading the attack on the galleys of a...

, the Peter Pomegranate
Peter Pomegranate
The Peter Pomegranate was a 16th-century warship completed for service in 1510. Its name most likely was in honour of Saint Peter, founder of the Christian church, and after the badge of Queen Catharine of Aragon, a pomegranate...

and the Henri Grâce à Dieu were denoted "great ships". This was only on the basis of their roughly-estimated size and not on their weight, crew or number of guns. When these carracks were superseded by the new-style galleon

Galleon

A galleon was a large, multi-decked sailing ship used primarily by European states from the 16th to 18th centuries. Whether used for war or commerce, they were generally armed with the demi-culverin type of cannon.-Etymology:...

s later in the 16th century, the term "great ship" was used to formally delineate the Navy's largest ships from all the rest.

The Stuart era

The formal system of dividing up the Navy's combatant warships into a number or groups or "rates", however, only originated in the very early part of the Stuart era, with the first lists of such categorisation appearing around 1604. At this time the combatant ships of the "Navy Royal"The term Royal Navy was only introduced after the Restoration of King Charles II

Charles II of England

Charles II was monarch of the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland.Charles II's father, King Charles I, was executed at Whitehall on 30 January 1649, at the climax of the English Civil War...

in 1660. were divided up according to the number of men required to man them at sea (i.e the size of the crew) into four groups:

Royal ships (the largest ships in the previous "great ships" grouping) mounting 42–55 guns
Great ships (the rest of the ships in the previous "great ships" grouping) mounting 38–40 guns
Middling ships mounting 30–32 guns
Small ships mounting less than 30 guns

By the early years of King Charles I

Charles I of England

Charles I was King of England, King of Scotland, and King of Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. Charles engaged in a struggle for power with the Parliament of England, attempting to obtain royal revenue whilst Parliament sought to curb his Royal prerogative which Charles...

's reign, these four groups had been renamed to a numerical sequence. The royal ships were now graded as first rank, the great ships as second rank, the middling ships as third rank, and the small ships as fourth rank. Soon afterwards, the structure was again modified, with the term rank now being replaced by rate, and the former small ships now being sub-divided into fourth, fifth and sixth rates.

The earliest rating was based not on the number of guns, but on the established complement (number of men). This first classıficatıon took place ın 1626, and was substantially altered in late 1653 as the complements of individual shıps were raised. From about 1660 the classification moved from one based on the number of men to one based on the number of carriage guns a ship carried.

Samuel Pepys

Samuel Pepys

Samuel Pepys FRS, MP, JP, was an English naval administrator and Member of Parliament who is now most famous for the diary he kept for a decade while still a relatively young man...

, then Secretary to the Admiralty

Admiralty

The Admiralty was formerly the authority in the Kingdom of England, and later in the United Kingdom, responsible for the command of the Royal Navy...

, revised the structure in 1677 and laid it down as a "solemn, universal and unalterable" classification. The rating of a ship was of administrative and military use. The number and weight of guns determined the size of crew needed, and hence the amount of pay and rations needed. It also indicated whether a ship was powerful enough to stand in the line of battle

Line of battle

In naval warfare, the line of battle is a tactic in which the ships of the fleet form a line end to end. A primitive form had been used by the Portuguese under Vasco Da Gama in 1502 near Malabar against a Muslim fleet.,Maarten Tromp used it in the Action of 18 September 1639 while its first use in...

. Pepys's original classification was updated by further definitions in 1714, 1721, 1760, 1782, 1801 and 1817 (the last being the most severe, as it provided for including in the count of guns the carronade

Carronade

The carronade was a short smoothbore, cast iron cannon, developed for the Royal Navy by the Carron Company, an ironworks in Falkirk, Scotland, UK. It was used from the 1770s to the 1850s. Its main function was to serve as a powerful, short-range anti-ship and anti-crew weapon...

s that had previously been excluded). On the whole the trend was for each rate to have a greater number of guns. For instance, Pepys allowed a first rate 90–100 guns, but on the 1801 scheme a first rate had 100–120. A sixth rate's range went from 4–18 to 20–28 (after 1714 any ship with fewer than 20 guns was unrated).

First, second and third rates (ships of the line)

A first-, second- or third-rate ship was regarded as a "ship-of-the-line". The first and second rates were three-deckers, that is, they had three continuous decks of guns (on the lower deck, middle deck and upper deck), as well as smaller weapons on the quarterdeck, forecastle and poop. The notable exception to this rule being ships such as the Santisima Trinidad of Spain, which had 120 guns and four gun decks. The largest third rates, those of 80 guns, were likewise three-deckers from the 1690s until the early 1750s, but both before this period and subsequent to it, 80-gun ships were built as two-deckers. All the other third rates, with 74 guns or less, were likewise two-deckers, with just two continuous decks of guns (on the lower deck and upper deck), as well as smaller weapons on the quarterdeck, forecastle and (if they had one) poop. A series of major changes to the rating system took effect in February 1817, when the carronades carried by each ship were included in the count of guns (previously these had usually been omitted); the first rate from that date included all of the three-deckers, the new second rate included all two-deckers of 80 guns or more, with the third rate reduced to two-deckers of fewer than 80 guns.

Fourth, fifth and sixth rates

The smaller fourth rates, of about 50 or 60 guns on two decks, were ships-of-the-line until 1756, when it was felt that such 50-gun ships were now too small for pitched battles. The larger fourth rates of 60 guns continued to be counted as ships-of-the-line, but few new ships of this rate were added, the 60-gun fourth rate being superseded over the next few decades by the 64-gun third rate. The Navy did retain some fourth rates for convoy escort, or as flagships on far-flung stations; it also converted some East Indiamen

East Indiamen

An East Indiaman was a ship operating under charter or license to any of the East India Companies of the major European trading powers of the 17th through the 19th centuries...

to that role.

The smaller two deckers originally blurred the distinction between a fourth rate and a fifth rate. At the low end of the fourth rate one might find the two-decker 50-gun ships from about 1756. The high end of the fifth rate would include two-deckers of 40- or 44-guns (from 1690) or even the demi-batterie 32-gun and 36-gun ships of the 1690–1730 period. The fifth rates at the start of the 18th century were generally "demi-batterie" ships, carrying a few heavy guns on their lower deck (which often used the rest of the lower deck for row ports) and a full battery of lesser guns on the upper deck. However, these were gradually phased out, as the low freeboard (i.e., the height of the lower deck gunport sills above the waterline) meant that in rough weather it was often impossible to open the lower deck gunports.

Fifth and sixth rates were never included among ships-of-the-line. The middle of the 18th century saw the introduction of a new fifth-rate type—the classic frigate, with no ports on the lower deck, and the main battery disposed solely on the upper deck, where it could be fought in all weathers.

Sixth-rate ships were generally useful as convoy

Convoy

A convoy is a group of vehicles, typically motor vehicles or ships, traveling together for mutual support and protection. Often, a convoy is organized with armed defensive support, though it may also be used in a non-military sense, for example when driving through remote areas.-Age of Sail:Naval...

escorts, for blockade

Blockade

A blockade is an effort to cut off food, supplies, war material or communications from a particular area by force, either in part or totally. A blockade should not be confused with an embargo or sanctions, which are legal barriers to trade, and is distinct from a siege in that a blockade is usually...

duties and the carrying of dispatches; their small size made them less suited for the general cruising tasks the Fifth-rate frigates did so well. Essentially there were two groups of sixth rates. The larger category comprised the sixth-rate frigates of 28 guns, carrying a main battery of twenty-four 9-pounder guns, as well as four smaller guns on their superstructures. The second comprised the "post ship

Post ship

Post ship was a designation used in the Royal Navy during the Age of Sail to describe a ship of the sixth-rate that was smaller than a frigate , but by virtue of being a rated ship , had to have as its captain a post captain rather than a lieutenant or commander...

s" of between 20 and 24 guns. These were too small to be formally counted as frigates (although colloquially often grouped with them), but still required a post-captain (i.e. an officer holding the substantive rank of captain) as their commander.

Unrated vessels

The rating system did not handle vessels smaller than the sixth rate. The remainder were simply "unrated". The larger of the unrated vessels were generally all called sloops, but that nomenclature is quite confusing for unrated vessels, especially when dealing with the finer points of "ship-sloop", "brig-sloop", "sloop-of-war

Sloop-of-war

In the 18th and most of the 19th centuries, a sloop-of-war was a warship with a single gun deck that carried up to eighteen guns. As the rating system covered all vessels with 20 guns and above, this meant that the term sloop-of-war actually encompassed all the unrated combat vessels including the...

" (which really just meant the same in naval parlance as "sloop") or even "corvette

Corvette

A corvette is a small, maneuverable, lightly armed warship, originally smaller than a frigate and larger than a coastal patrol craft or fast attack craft , although many recent designs resemble frigates in size and role...

" (the last a French term that the British Navy did not use until the 1840s). Technically the category of "sloop-of-war" included any unrated combatant vessel—in theory, the term even extended to bomb vessel

Bomb vessel

A bomb vessel, bomb ship, bomb ketch, or simply bomb was a type of wooden sailing naval ship. Its primary armament was not cannon —although bomb vessels carried a few cannon for self-defence—but rather mortars mounted forward near the bow and elevated to a high angle, and projecting their fire in a...

s and fire ship

Fire ship

A fire ship, used in the days of wooden rowed or sailing ships, was a ship filled with combustibles, deliberately set on fire and steered into an enemy fleet, in order to destroy ships, or to create panic and make the enemy break formation. Ships used as fire ships were usually old and worn out or...

s. During the Napoleonic Wars

Napoleonic Wars

The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...

, the Royal Navy increased the number of sloops in service by some 400% as it found that it needed vast numbers of these small vessels for escorting convoys (as in any war, the introduction of convoys created a huge need for escort vessels), combating privateers, and themselves taking prizes.

The number of guns and the rate

The rated number of guns often differed from the number a vessel actually carried. The guns that determined a ship's rating were the carriage-mounted cannon

Cannon

A cannon is any piece of artillery that uses gunpowder or other usually explosive-based propellents to launch a projectile. Cannon vary in caliber, range, mobility, rate of fire, angle of fire, and firepower; different forms of cannon combine and balance these attributes in varying degrees,...

, long-barreled, muzzle-loading guns that moved on 'trucks' — wooden wheels. The count did not include smaller (and basically anti-personnel) weapons such as swivel-mounted

Swivel gun

The term swivel gun usually refers to a small cannon, mounted on a swiveling stand or fork which allows a very wide arc of movement. Another type of firearm referred to as a swivel gun was an early flintlock combination gun with two barrels that rotated along their axes to allow the shooter to...

guns ("swivels"), which fired half-pound projectiles, or small arms.

For instance, HMS Cynthia

HMS Cynthia (1796)

HMS Cynthia was a ship sloop of unusual design, launched in 1796. She took part in one medal-worthy boat action and participated in captures of a number of merchant vessels, was present at two notable occasions, the surrender of the Dutch fleet in the Vlieter Incident and the capture of Alexandria,...

was rated for 18 guns but during construction her rating was reduced to 16 guns (6-pounders), and she also carried 14 half-pound swivels.

Vessels might also carry other guns that did not contribute to the rating. Examples of such weapons would include mortars, howitzers or boat guns, the boat guns being small guns intended for mounting on the bow of a vessel's boats to provide fire support during landings, cutting out expeditions, and the like. From 1778, however, the most important exception was the carronade

Carronade

.

The late 1770s saw the introduction of the carronade, which was a short-barreled and relatively short-range gun, half the weight of equivalent long guns, and which was generally mounted on a slide rather than on trucks. The new carronades were generally housed on a vessel's upperworks—quarterdeck and forecastle—some as additions to its existing ordnance and some as replacements. When the carronades replaced or were in lieu of carriage-mounted cannon they generally counted in arriving at the rating, but not all were, and so may or may not have been included in the count of guns, though rated vessels might carry up to twelve 18-, 24- or 32-pounder carronades.

For instance, HMS Armada

HMS Armada (1810)

HMS Armada was a Royal Navy 74-gun third-rate ship of the line. She was launched on 23 March 1810 by Mrs Pridham, the wife of the Mayor of Plymouth, Mr Joseph Pridham. After a relatively undistinguished career, Armada was sold out of the Navy in 1863 and broken up at Marshall's ship breaking yard...

was rated as a third rate of 74 guns. She carried 28 32-pounder guns on her gundeck, 28 18-pounder guns on her upperdeck, four 12-pounder guns and 10 32-pounder carronades on her quarterdeck, two 12-pounder guns and two 32-pounder carronades on her forecastle, and six 18-pounder carronades on her poop deck. In all, this 74-gun vessel carried 80 cannon: 62 guns and 18 carronades.

When carronades became part (or in some cases all) of a ship's main armament, they had to be included in the count of guns.

For instance, Bonne Citoyenne was a 20-gun corvette of the French Navy

French Navy

The French Navy, officially the Marine nationale and often called La Royale is the maritime arm of the French military. It includes a full range of fighting vessels, from patrol boats to a nuclear powered aircraft carrier and 10 nuclear-powered submarines, four of which are capable of launching...

that the British captured and recommissioned in the Royal navy as the 20-gun sloop

Sloop-of-war

and post ship

Post ship

HMS Bonne Citoyenne

HMS Bonne Citoyenne (1796)

Bonne Citoyenne was a 20-gun corvette of the French Navy, which the Royal Navy captured and recommissioned as the sloop-of-war HMS Bonne Citoyenne. Her most famous action was her capture of the French frigate Furieuse on 6 July 1809 for which her crew would earn the Naval General Service Medal. Her...

. She carried two 9-pounder cannon and eighteen 32-pounder carronades.

By the Napoleonic Wars

Napoleonic Wars

there was no exact correlation between formal gun rating and the actual number of long guns or carronades any individual vessel might carry. One therefore needs to distinguish between the established armament of a vessel (which rarely altered) and the actual guns carried, which might happen quite frequently for a variety of reasons; guns might be lost overboard during a storm, or "burst" in service and thus useless, or jettisoned to speed the ship during a chase, or indeed removed down into the hold in order to use the ship (temporarily) as a troop transport. Also some of the guns were removed from a ship during peacetime service, to reduce the stress on the ship's structure, which is why there was actually a distinction between the wartime complement of guns (and men) and the lower peacetime complement—the figure normally quoted for any vessel is the highest (wartime) establishment).

Royal Navy rating system in force during the Napoleonic Wars

Type	Rate	Guns	Gun decks	Men	Approximate Burthen in tons (see note B)	In Commission 1794	In Commission 1814
Ship of the line Ship of the line A ship of the line was a type of naval warship constructed from the 17th through the mid-19th century to take part in the naval tactic known as the line of battle, in which two columns of opposing warships would manoeuvre to bring the greatest weight of broadside guns to bear... (see note A)	1st Rate First-rate First rate was the designation used by the Royal Navy for its largest ships of the line. While the size and establishment of guns and men changed over the 250 years that the rating system held sway, from the early years of the eighteenth century the first rates comprised those ships mounting 100...	100 to 120	3	850 to 875	2,500	5	7
	2nd Rate Second-rate In the British Royal Navy, a second rate was a ship of the line which by the start of the 18th century mounted 90 to 98 guns on three gun decks; earlier 17th century second rates had fewer guns and were originally two-deckers or had only partially armed third gun decks. The term in no way implied...	90 to 98	3	700 to 750	about 2,200	9	8
	3rd Rate Third-rate In the British Royal Navy, a third rate was a ship of the line which from the 1720s mounted between 64 and 80 guns, typically built with two gun decks . Years of experience proved that the third rate ships embodied the best compromise between sailing ability , firepower, and cost...	64 to 80	2	500 to 650	1,750	71	103
	4th Rate Fourth-rate In the British Royal Navy, a fourth rate was, during the first half of the 18th century, a ship of the line mounting from 46 up to 60 guns. While the number of guns stayed subsequently in the same range up until 1817, after 1756 the ships of 50 guns and below were considered too weak to stand in...	50 to 60	2	320 to 420	about 1,000	8	10
Frigate Frigate A frigate is any of several types of warship, the term having been used for ships of various sizes and roles over the last few centuries.In the 17th century, the term was used for any warship built for speed and maneuverability, the description often used being "frigate-built"... (see note A)	5th Rate Fifth-rate In Britain's Royal Navy during the classic age of fighting sail, a fifth rate was the penultimate class of warships in a hierarchal system of six "ratings" based on size and firepower.-Rating:...	32 to 44	1	200 to 300	700 to 1,450	78	134
	6th Rate Sixth-rate Sixth rate was the designation used by the Royal Navy for small warships mounting between 20 and 24 nine-pounder guns on a single deck, sometimes with guns on the upper works and sometimes without.-Rating:...	28	1	200	450 to 550	22	Nil
Post ship Post ship Post ship was a designation used in the Royal Navy during the Age of Sail to describe a ship of the sixth-rate that was smaller than a frigate , but by virtue of being a rated ship , had to have as its captain a post captain rather than a lieutenant or commander...	6th Rate Sixth-rate Sixth rate was the designation used by the Royal Navy for small warships mounting between 20 and 24 nine-pounder guns on a single deck, sometimes with guns on the upper works and sometimes without.-Rating:...	20 to 24	1	140 to 160	340 to 450	10	25
Sloop-of-war Sloop-of-war In the 18th and most of the 19th centuries, a sloop-of-war was a warship with a single gun deck that carried up to eighteen guns. As the rating system covered all vessels with 20 guns and above, this meant that the term sloop-of-war actually encompassed all the unrated combat vessels including the...	Unrated	16 to 18	1	90 to 125	380	76	360
Gun-brig Brig A brig is a sailing vessel with two square-rigged masts. During the Age of Sail, brigs were seen as fast and manoeuvrable and were used as both naval warships and merchant vessels. They were especially popular in the 18th and early 19th centuries... or Cutter	Unrated	6 to 14	1	25 to 90	< 220

Note A From 1756 on, the Royal Navy no longer classified smaller two-deckers of the fourth rate (primarily the 50-gun ships) as ships of the line. It generally classified them, like all smaller warships used primarily in the role of escort and patrol ("convoys and cruising") vessels, as "cruisers", a term that covered everything from the smaller two-deckers down to the small gun-brigs and cutters. The larger fifth rate, generally two-decked ships of 40 or 44 guns (and thus technically not "frigates", although 40-gun frigates were also built during the Napoleonic War), also fell into this category.

Note B The ton in this instance is defined as 35 cubic foot (0.991089645 m³) of water and is not a unit of mass. The (burthen) tonnage of a ships was calculated using the formula "k" x "b" x ½"b"/94, where "k" was the keel length and "b" the maximum breadth of the vessel. Therefore, one should not change a displacement in "tons" into a displacement in "tonnes". However, 35 cubic foot (0.991089645 m³) of seawater does have a mass of very approximately one imperial (long) ton

Long ton

Long ton is the name for the unit called the "ton" in the avoirdupois or Imperial system of measurements, as used in the United Kingdom and several other Commonwealth countries. It has been mostly replaced by the tonne, and in the United States by the short ton...

(2240 pounds), as used in Britain. Note also: that the ton for merchant ships is defined as 100 cu ft (2.8 m³) of water (the register ton).

1817 changes

In February 1817 the rating system changed. The recommendation from the Board of Admiralty to the Prince Regent was dated 25 November 1816, but the Order in Council establishing the new ratings was issued in February 1817. From February 1817 all carronades were included in the established number of guns. Until that date, carronades only "counted" if they were in place of long guns; when the carronades replaced "long" guns (e.g. on the upper deck of a sloop or post ship, thus providing its main battery), such carronades were counted.

1856 changes

There was a further major change in the rating system in 1856. From that date, the first rate comprised all ships carrying 110 guns and upwards, or the complement of which consisted of 1,000 men or more; the second rate included one of HM's royal yachts, and otherwise comprised all ships carrying under 110 guns but more than 80 guns, or the complements of which were under 1,000 but not less than 800 men; the third rate included all the rest of HM's royal yachts and "all such vessels as may bear the flag of pendant of any Admiral Superintendent or Captain Superintendent of one of HM's Dockyards", and otherwise comprised all ships carrying at most 80 guns but not less than 60 guns, or the complements of which were under 800 but not less than 600 men; the fourth rate comprised all frigate-built ships of which the complement was not more than 600 and not less than 410 men; the fifth rate comprised all ships of which the complement was not more than 400 and not less than 300 men; the sixth rate consisted all all other ships bearing a captain. Of unrated vessels, the category of sloops comprised all vessels commanded by commanders; next followed all other ships commanded by lieutenants, and having complements of not less than 60 men; finally were "smaller vessels, not classed as above, with such smaller complements as the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty may from time to time direct".

Other classifications

Rating was not the only system of classification used. Throughout the Age of Sail the definition of the term "ship

Full rigged ship

A full rigged ship or fully rigged ship is a sailing vessel with three or more masts, all of them square rigged. A full rigged ship is said to have a ship rig....

" required it to be a vessel being square-rigged on three masts. Sailing vessels with only two masts or a single mast were technically not 'ships', and in the sailing era would not have been described as such. Vessels with fewer than three masts were unrated sloops, generally two-masted vessels rigged as snow

Snow (ship)

A snow or snaw is a sailing vessel. A type of brig , snows were primarily used as merchant ships, but saw war service as well...

s or ketch

Ketch

A ketch is a sailing craft with two masts: a main mast, and a shorter mizzen mast abaft of the main mast, but forward of the rudder post. Both masts are rigged mainly fore-and-aft. From one to three jibs may be carried forward of the main mast when going to windward...

es (in the first half of the 18th century), or brig

Brig

A brig is a sailing vessel with two square-rigged masts. During the Age of Sail, brigs were seen as fast and manoeuvrable and were used as both naval warships and merchant vessels. They were especially popular in the 18th and early 19th centuries...

s in succeeding eras. However some sloops were three-masted or ship-rigged, and these were known as ship sloops.

Vessels were also sometimes classified according to the substantive rank of her commanding officer. For instance, when the commanding officer of a gun-brig or even a cutter was a lieutenant

Lieutenant

A lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer in many nations' armed forces. Typically, the rank of lieutenant in naval usage, while still a junior officer rank, is senior to the army rank...

with the status of master-and-commander, the custom was to recategorise the vessel as a sloop

Sloop

A sloop is a sail boat with a fore-and-aft rig and a single mast farther forward than the mast of a cutter....

. For instance, when Pitt Burnaby Greene, the commanding officer of the Bonne Citoyenne

HMS Bonne Citoyenne (1796)

in 1811, received his promotion to post-captain

Post-Captain

Post-captain is an obsolete alternative form of the rank of captain in the Royal Navy.The term served to distinguish those who were captains by rank from:...

, the Navy reclassed the sloop as a post ship

Post ship

End of the rating system

The rating system of the Royal Navy formally came to an end in 1876 by declaration of the Admiralty

Admiralty

The Admiralty was formerly the authority in the Kingdom of England, and later in the United Kingdom, responsible for the command of the Royal Navy...

. The main cause behind this declaration focused on new types of gun, the introduction of steam propulsion and the use of iron and steel armor which made rating ships by the number of guns obsolete.

Practices in other navies

Although the rating system described in this article was only used by the Royal Navy, other major navies used similar means of grading their warships. For example, the French Navy used a system of five rates ("rangs") which had a similar purpose. British authors might still use "first rate" when referring to the largest ships of other nations or "third rate" to speak of a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

seventy-four

Seventy-four (ship)

The "seventy-four" was a type of two-decked sailing ship of the line nominally carrying 74 guns. Originally developed by the French Navy in the mid-18th century, the design proved to be a good balance between firepower and sailing qualities, and was adopted by the British Royal Navy , as well as...

. By the end of the 18th century, the rating system had mostly fallen out of common use (although technically it remained in existence for nearly another century), ships of the line usually being characterized directly by their nominal number of guns, the numbers even being used as the name of the type, as in "a squadron of three seventy-fours".

United States (1905)

As of 1905, ships of the United States Navy

United States Navy

The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...

were by law divided into classes called rates. Vessels of the first rate had a displacement tonnage in excess of 8000 tons; second rate, from 4000 to 8000 tons; third rate, from 1000 to 4000 tons; and fourth rate, of less than 1000 tons. Converted merchant vessels that were armed and equipped as cruisers were of the second rate if over 6000 tons, and of the third rate if over 1000 and less than 6000 tons. Auxiliary vessels such as colliers, supply vessels, repair ships, etc., if over 4000 tons, were of the third rate. Auxiliary vessels of less than 4000 tons — except tugs, sailing ships, and receiving ships which were not rated — were of the fourth rate. Torpedo-boat destroyers, torpedo boats, and similar vessels were not rated. Captains commanded ships of the first rate; captains or commanders commanded ships of the second rate; commanders or lieutenant-commanders commanded ships of the third rate; lieutenant-commanders or lieutenants commanded ships of the fourth rate. Lieutenant-commanders, lieutenants, ensigns, or warrant officers might command unrated vessels, depending on the size of the vessel.

Other uses

The term first-rate has passed into general usage, as an adjective used to mean something of the best or highest quality available. Second-rate and third-rate are also used as adjectives to mean that something is of inferior quality. This is ironic as the third rates formed the vast majority of the battlefleet, as the three-decker first rates and second rates were too expensive to use as much more than a flagship for the Admiral commanding a fleet; while less powerful than the three-deckers, the third rate, was the essential element of the fighting fleet.

External links

Michael Philips, Ships of the Old Navy

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.