# Wooden Warship's Ratings



## lwhitehead (May 13, 2018)

Hi folks I need to know for my 18th Century Hard Grim Dark Pirate, Pirate Hunters, Navies and other type of Sea based action. 

I need to know about Wooden Man of War Ship Ratings I mean the other Sea Powers of the 18th century other then Britain.


LW


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## CyberWar (May 13, 2018)

The rating system is rather specific to the Royal Navy, though is frequently applied by historians and fiction writers alike to contemporary ships of other nations for the sake of convenience. At the time, nations other than Britain used their own largely arbitrary hull classification systems, the British rating system being the first definite effort to systematize and standardize ship types.

Simply put, the rating system was based on how many guns the ship carried, and (directly related to the former) how many decks it had. A 1st-rate ship-of-the-line had three gun decks and could have anywhere between 100 and 120 guns. 2nd-rate ships also had 3 decks, with their guns numbering in the 90's. 3d and 4th-rate ships-of-the-line had two decks and could have anywhere between 48 to 80 guns.

5th and 6th-rate warships were classified as frigates, also known as "man-o-wars", having one enclosed gun deck and from 20 to 44 guns. Smaller ships carrying less than 20 guns, or serving a specialized purpose (such as mortar-bearing bomb ketches), were "unrated".

Generally, 3d-rate ships-of-the-line were the most common large warships at the time, striking reasonable balance between firepower and cost. 2nd and 1st rate ships were much rarer due to the expense of building and maintaining them, and were generally used as flagships of the fleet, as well as displays of national wealth and power - it must be considered that constructing a 1st-rate ship-of-the-line would consume an entire forest's worth of fine oak timber, and ships of that size would field more artillery than entire field armies of the day.

However, the real workhorses of the 18th century navies were the frigates. Where the larger ships would generally make show only in pitched naval battles that did not happen very often, frigates managed most of the everyday naval operations, from anti-piracy ops to exploration and charting. Frigate was by far the most common type of warship, affordable to nations without the means and/or the interest to support a massive navy.

The smaller unrated ships would be used either for tasks that required speed and minimal defensive capabilities (such as running dispatches), or for specialized tasks (such as shore bombardment with explosive ordnance).

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If you intend to write fiction set in the Age of Sail, the British rating system is a useful tool to go by regardless of what nation's ships are being described, since it provides an immediate reference for the reader without having to look up obscure foreign naval terminology to get an idea of what kind of ship is being described.


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## lwhitehead (May 13, 2018)

Yes a Hard Grim Dark Pirate, Pirate Hunter, Privateer, and Sea Naval actions set in a 18th Century world timeframe 1715 to 1730 or 1750, 

For a Frigate a 4th rate was the largest to get away with cuting out actions, 3rd and above are ships of the line to large to chase after Pirates.

LW


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