The Sailing Frigate. Robert Gardiner
although they did convoy escort work and joined squadrons on some of the less demanding stations. However, there was a design emphasis on sailing qualities, especially on manoeuvrability (‘nimble’ as it was expressed in the seventeenth century) and there was a specific reason for this. In fleet battles they had a role which was unique to that era: defending bigger ships from fireship attack and, conversely, clearing the way for their own fireships’ offensive.
Most of the roles that would fall to the eighteenth-century frigate were at this time performed by Fourth Rates. These small two-deckers were extremely useful ships, large enough to stand in the line of battle, but small enough to be built in relatively large numbers – and between the Civil War and the Glorious Revolution more than twice as many ships of this class were constructed than Fifth Rates. Outside the main battlefleet, they served in minor squadrons, provided the local ship of force on more remote stations, and were much involved in the attack and defence of trade.
Although Fourth Rates were built strong enough to survive a fleet action, their sailing qualities were not entirely ignored. Some (like SLR0005) had decidedly fine lines, and there is documentary evidence than many were considered fast, but as two-deckers their height of side would always hamper their performance to windward, making them less weatherly than sleeker ships. They were generally seaworthy and capable of long-distance deployments, but their lower gundeck ports were too close to the waterline to be opened in anything more than a moderate seaway, so they could not be regarded as all-weather cruisers. In truth, they were compromise warships that could perform most functions adequately but were not optimised for any one role – jacks of all trades but complete masters of none.
The invasion of 1688 which replaced King James II with William and Mary was called the Glorious Revolution, and it brought with it a revolution in foreign policy that in turn revolutionised the strategy and tactics of the sea war. England, after a generation of fighting the Dutch, was now co-opted into ‘Dutch William’s’ long-running conflict with France. This presented an entirely new challenge to the Royal Navy, and its administrators were aware that it would be a different kind of war from anything they had experienced previously. Among the first responses to this novel scenario was a programme of new Fifth Rates, to be built to a radical design concept proposed by Lord Torrington, the First Lord of the Admiralty. His specification, dating from June 1689, has a good claim to being the first conscious attempt to build a specialist cruising ship in the age of sail, and hence the first real frigate.
LORD TORRINGTON’S SPECIFICATION
This model is a unique contemporary depiction of the new Fifth Rates as originally conceived (with the requirements indicated in the original wording of the specification). As built, they varied in details – particularly in the number of ports on the lower deck, but the dimensions of the model are a perfect fit for the early ships of the class. They eventually mounted 32–36 guns, the main battery being sakers (6pdrs) with six, eight or occasionally more of the larger demi-culverins (9pdrs) on the lower deck, right forward and/or right aft where the sheer of the deck gave the ports most freeboard. Although the ports did not face directly forward or aft, they were originally described as chase guns, but in the right conditions they must have given the ships a little extra punch. Because of this partial lower deck armament, they are sometimes described by the French term demi-batterie.
HHR14 US Naval Academy Museum, Annapolis, Maryland
Torrington’s new frigates were built in anticipation of a strategic situation that would be very different from what had gone before. Recent experience had been confined to war with the Dutch, a maritime trading nation like England, that had to bring their considerable commerce home through the narrow seas around the British isles. To achieve this the Dutch battlefleet could not avoid fighting its English equivalent, and the wars became a series of hard-fought slogging matches, usually in coastal or confined waters. Both navies had some small craft not committed to the line of battle, but more often than not these sloops and pinnaces were designed to serve the fleet as auxiliaries and not for the attack or defence of trade, which tended to be moved in large convoys screened by the battlefleets. As a result even commerce warfare was on a relatively large scale, typical examples being the unsuccessful assault on a 70-strong Dutch convoy sheltering at Bergen in 1665 or the infamous ‘Holmes’s bonfire’ – the destruction of 150 Dutch merchantmen in the Vlie anchorage – the following year. These were squadron actions where even the close escorts were usually small line of battle ships or whatever could be spared from the main fleets. In such circumstances there had been no call for specialist cruising ships.
SLR0393 This model of a Sixth Rate has ‘1706’ and ‘B.R.’ engraved on the supporting brackets, the initials of Benjamin Rosewell, who was appointed Master Shipwright at Chatham in that year. No ship of this type was built in 1706, so if the model was a celebration of his achievement, it probably represents a vessel he was associated with earlier in his career. One contender is the Flamborough of 1697 built at Chatham while Rosewell was jointly Assistant Master Shipwright with William Lee. The ship was lost at the end of 1705 after an epic battle with a French 54-gun ship, so it would be an appropriate memorial. Although this is pure speculation, William Lee is thought to have been a keen modelmaker, and he himself became joint Surveyor in 1706, so given the highly personal nature of the apprenticeship system, such a present to a friend or protégé is not unlikely. The model itself is similar in most important respects to the Lizard, the major difference being one less main deck port and rather less decorative work – both possibly the result of a more recent refit.
Those in England who had considered the nature of any future war with France expected Louis XIV’s expensive new battlefleet to be carefully husbanded, while the principal strategy became one of commerce warfare. Against the Dutch, England had been the predator, and in terms of merchant ships gained or lost, the net winner by a large margin. Now the boot was on the other foot: England, and its new ally the Netherlands, offered the tempting target of the world’s largest carrying trade, and although France initially confounded the experts by attempting a battlefleet strategy, the crushing defeats of Barfleur and La Hogue in 1692 put paid to this short-lived ambition, and heralded the beginnings of the obsession with commerce warfare that was to dominate French 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