maritime thinking for two centuries.
Besides a novel strategic situation, the Royal Navy of the 1690s also faced new geographical challenges. The Dutch wars were largely fought in the Channel and North Sea, in coastal waters often so shoal that fleets would anchor to sit out the effects of an adverse tide; while damaged ships were assured of a friendly port at no great distance. However, the French war brought the prospect of operations off the wild and inhospitable Biscay coast, since the main French Atlantic base was at Brest. Furthermore, both British and Dutch trade in what a later era called the Western Approaches would be very exposed to flank attacks from French commerce raiders for large parts of its voyage, both outward and homeward bound.
Torrington’s innovative ships were clearly intended to meet the new circumstances. The emphasis was on all-weather capabilities (the 7ft freeboard to the gunports), habitability (a clear, well-aired lower deck to give the crew more reasonable conditions), and sailing qualities (the lower deck was set at the waterline to reduce the height of side, to make them more weatherly). They also had a high length-to-breadth ratio for speed, but were not as long as the three ‘galley-frigates’ built previously that were optimised for rowing; these were built specifically for operations against North African corsairs, and had a specially large crew of oarsmen (originally recruited from very reluctant Thames Watermen). It is tempting to see these ships as the inspiration for Torrington’s concept, since they were generally similar in layout – but so were most large merchantmen of the time, with a gunport or two fore and aft on an otherwise clear lower deck. The new frigates were equipped for rowing, but they had only half the number of oar ports and were never allocated an enlarged crew, so this was an auxiliary function, useful to give the ship some movement in flat calms and to manoeuvre in confined waters.
Perhaps most importantly, at about 105ft by 27ft and 360 tons they were small enough to be built in large numbers, and around thirty of these ships were to see service by the end of the war. They were the mainstay of the cruiser force, but in 1693 a modest programme of new Sixth Rates was put in hand. These were more conventional than the half-battery Fifths, and little original thought seems to have been given to their design. On 7 July 1693 the Admiralty requested ‘with all speed, a small, light, good sailing frigate … of the 6th Rate, to carry about 20 guns …’ The Navy Board committee on their design consisted of the Surveyor, the Comptroller and one other Commissioner, Capt Willshaw, and they came up with a wholly conventional single-decker, much like those that had been built for the past twenty years, armed with twenty sakers (approximately 6pdrs) and four 3pdrs. In total eighteen were built between 1693 and 1697, and there is no evidence that they varied in any substantial way one from another.
Their appearance as built is beyond doubt, since the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford has a well-documented model, apparently of the Lizard, while a contract specification for the Swan confirms the details. However, the main features of this type can be seen in model SLR0393, which, although dated 1706, represents earlier practice.
In terms of the sea war, the conflicts of 1689-97 and 1702-12 might be seen as one long struggle against what the French called the guerre de course, the war on trade. Although this involved privateers – state-licensed private corsairs – and individual warships, what proved most difficult to counter was the hiring out of medium-sized warships to privateer consortia, who operated them in squadrons, sometimes in conjunction with naval forces proper (in convoy attacks the navy tackled the escorts while the privateers snapped up the merchantmen).
This had come about because the French battlefleet was largely laid up after 1692 and the state of French finances was parlous – as it usually was after a few years of war. This was a cheap form of maritime warfare, using otherwise idle assets; it was also nearly impossible to defeat by conventional means since the Anglo-Dutch navies could not spare enough ships and most of those available were not powerful enough to withstand these squadronal attacks. Having failed at both close blockade and hunting down the most notorious privateers, the allies responded with desperate ingenuity, attacking the ‘vermin’, as one naval officer put it, ‘in their holes’, trying amphibious assaults and a string of bombardments of privateer ports using bomb vessels and explosion boats – where the new Fifth Rates, with their ability to manoeuvre under oars, proved very useful in inshore support roles – but it was all to no avail. By the end of the first war, nobody in the allied admiralties believed the problem had been solved.
Nor did anyone believe the peace would last, so it was important to implement any lessons that could be gleaned. The half-battery Fifth Rates had suffered heavily in combat, so they were largely replaced after 1700 by more powerful fully two-decked 40-gun ships. Many losses had involved boarding, a tactic encouraged by the larger crews on French warships and privateers, whereas the English were more inclined to rely on gunnery. However, ships with open waists could not fight their guns while repelling boarders, so it was decided to build future cruisers ‘with a deck over the guns’, the idea being that the main battery might drive off the enemy ship even as its boarders fought for possession of the deck above. This was not the official reason, as given in the August 1702 order for Sixth Rates, the first of the newly declared war. These were to be ‘such a vessel as the Swan [of 1694] … the said ship to have 24 guns and to have a slight deck over the guns in the waist, as well to prevent any dangers which may happen from shipping seas, as for keeping the guns clear from the rigging which may fall upon the deck in time of action …’. However, there is evidence that a major preoccupation of the time was with ways of making the cruisers ‘defensible’ against boarding – one of the more bizarre involved spring-loaded explosive devices that could be fired from below to clear the upper deck, and this was actually tested on two ships in the 1690s.
SLR0397 The best example of the new pattern Sixth Rate with the ‘slight deck’ – in effect, a spar deck – over the battery is a model in the Thomson Collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario that probably represents one of the first, the Nightingale of 1702. It shows the spar deck to be comprised of grating, a throwback to the early seventeenth century when the waist was often covered in this way. However, the Greenwich collection includes this model, which because of the number of gunports is usually catalogued as a 30-gun ship. In fact, the eleven main deck ports and light spar deck show it to be a Sixth Rate, although none of the Navy-built ships matches the detail. In December 1706 the Deptford officers were sent to look at a new private-venture building at Blackwall, and reported that the ship ‘… can carry 24 guns like the other Navy 6th Rates, but may conveniently have ports for 28’. She was purchased as the Aldborough and armed with only 24 guns. This model is made to a smaller than usual scale and at 1/64th (3/16th of an inch to the foot) the dimensions are a close fit to the Deal Castle, similarly purchased from a merchant builder. It may not be a firm identification, but it is certainly the right kind of ship – and it underlines the fact that most ships of this time had more gunports than guns.
The pink stern as shown off in a model of a Sixth Rate from about 1702, which also features the other innovation of the period, the spar deck over the gun battery. This suggests that a Sixth Rate of this design was seriously contemplated although none was actually built; the Fifth Rates that were built must have looked like scaled-up versions.
HHR13 US Naval Academy Museum, Annapolis, Maryland
The search for improvement was to throw up a number of ingenious, if not downright odd, suggestions. In April 1702 the Lord High Admiral and the Navy Board met to discuss ‘a model lately made by the Surveyor of a 5th Rate Frigate with a deck over her guns, pink fashion, and the same being very well approved of’ the Navy Board was then ordered to build one at Woolwich ‘according to the said model’. The ship became the Tartar and two similar vessels, Falcon and Fowey, were also built. Other Fifth Rates ordered at this time were conventional 40-gun
