The Sailing Frigate. Robert Gardiner
24, and the new 20s; even the Ordnance records for the period confirm that these ships did not carry more than 20 guns, under any circumstances. The model even lacks a figurehead, perhaps suggesting that it was still a matter of debate when the model was produced.
SLR0419 SLR0382 It used to be said that official Admiralty or Navy Board models were made as part of the design SLR0382 process, but as the more elaborate examples would take as long to build as the ships they depicted, this was manifestly untrue. There is plenty of documentary evidence that ‘models’ were produced at the same time as plans, but the references are to ‘solids’ – either full-hull block or half-models that could be carved quickly. Among the oldest that survive are these two, which represent opponents in the trade warfare of the conflict over Spanish Succession. Ludlow Castle (1707) was one of the 40-gun two-deckers built to replace the half-battery 32-gun ships, whereas Triton, a French 42-gun ship of 1697 captured in 1702, was typical of the threat they were built to face. Although the ships carried a roughly comparable armament, at 660 tons to 530, the French ship was 25 per cent larger. The larger tonnage went into a finer hull form, which usually meant better sailing qualities – indeed, a higher ratio of armament to tonnage became a feature (and, some said, a besetting sin) of British warship design in the eighteenth century. The model records the French ship’s very sharp lines, and is an early example of the Royal Navy’s consistent policy of analysing ships taken from its enemies in detailed surveys, plans and, in some cases, models.
SLR0406 There is an Admiralty draught of the Success, of 1712 with resembles SLR0400 very closely, except that it shows eleven ports a side and the channels have been raised to the mid-point of the gunports. Therefore, it is likely that the later Sixth Rates of the 1710-12 group looked more like this model – certainly after peacetime fitting out. It was a common phenomenon for ‘habitability’ to become a greater priority for cruising in peacetime, and the more extensive quarter galleries certainly suggest more concern for the captain’s comfort.
None of these expedients made a significant impact on the guerre de course, where French success put increasing pressure on the Admiralty to find a solution to mounting losses among the merchant fleet. In terms of cruiser design, they vacillated: after the pink-sterned experiments, they returned to two-decked 40s; these were widely criticized for poor sailing qualities, so there was a brief reversion to half-battery 32s, then back to 40s again; even the Sixth Rates were now considered over-built, and by 1710 the Surveyors of the Navy were instructed by the Admiralty to consider ‘what may most properly be done for her Majesty’s ships of the 6th Rate to render them better sailers’. The Surveyors proposed reducing the weight of their tophamper – especially the rigging – and recommended that in any future refit ‘all superfluous weight in their upper works’ be reduced, and for new construction the scantlings and room and space be ‘abated in many parts’ – in other words, they were to be more lightly constructed, with more space between the framing.
This was formalized the following year when the Admiralty, in setting out the pressing need for more ships of 40-guns and 20-guns, informed the Navy Board ‘that it was our opinion the 6th Rates should be built with one deck only and a small, low forecastle; that the 5th Rates ought to be made somewhat larger; and that neither the one nor the other should carry any guns on their quarterdecks; and that instead of a lion on their heads, it may be more convenient to place some very light figure thereon, or a painted board … ’. Among other things, this meant the end of the spar deck over the guns. The NMM model SLR0400 is a perfect depiction of the resulting ships.
The Navy’s official shipwrights are often accused of ultra conservatism, but English cruiser design is also indebted to at least one eccentric, wayward and amateur genius. Peregrine Osborne, Lord Danby was at times a spendthrift, a quarreller and a womaniser, but his overriding passion was ship design. His life-long enthusiasm for speed under sail began at an early age and his expensive hobby exposed his father, the Duke of Leeds and a leading minister in William III’s government, to satirical comment:
I must needs tell you he’s at great charges
For his son Danby’s Yachts and Barges.
However, his yachts and barges were successful enough to attract real admiration. Danby pursued a career of mixed success as a naval officer, but he was renowned in the fleet for his Bridget Galley, described by Sir Cloudesley Shovell as ‘an incomparable sailer’. Nominally a tender to his command, the 70-gun Resolution, the galley was operated by Danby as a speedy and highly successful privateer. Even his captain’s barge – again to his own design – was the envy of flag officers.
Exploiting his connections at Court, he went on to design the Royal Transport, a fast yacht for the king’s personal use which so impressed Czar Peter the Great during his visit that it was presented to him. There is a model in the naval museum in St Petersburg which claims to be this ship, but it is a nineteenth-century identification, and has none of the capacious accommodation the Royal Transport is documented as possessing. Furthermore, the rig of the model – sometimes described as the first identifiable schooner rig in history – is at odds with the evidence that at least one mast was square rigged.
SLR0394 Originally in the Mercury Collection, by tradition this model was known as the Carolina, a yacht converted from Danby’s Peregrine Galley. Although it is very heavily decorated, with a lot of accommodation aft like a royal yacht, this identification was dismissed by R C Anderson, who first catalogued it, because the dimensions did not fit, and plans and paintings attested to the yacht carrying a ship rig, whereas this model has only two masts. No other royal yacht fits the model’s characteristics either. However, John Franklin, an expert on Navy Board models, has since proved beyond reasonable doubt that official models used many other modelling scales besides a quarter-inch to the foot. In fact, this model has the proportions of the Carolina ex-Peregrine Galley at a scale of about 1/44. Now Danby is precisely the sort of man who would want to celebrate his own ingenuity with a model – particularly since the building of the ship represented a financial victory in a long fight with authority to obtain compensation for a promised pension which had not been forthcoming.
On this model the position of the main mast seems very far forward, and the rig looks so unbalanced there is a strong temptation to look for some sort of mizzen to turn it into a conventional ship rig; but there is absolutely no evidence for one. According to Deptford Dockyard records, the Peregrine Galley was first built with a light two-masted square rig, but suffered an acute lack of after-sail (the main probably carried some kind of bilander sail, which fits with what is known of the Royal Transport’s rig). The Dockyard felt that the only solution was to rerig the vessel completely with a full ship rig, and this was carried out in January 1703, barely two years after the Peregrine was completed. This is why most of the iconography shows the vessel as a three-masted ship.
There is one clinching piece of evidence: when the ship was employed, in effect, as the Duke of Marlborough’s yacht, carrying him to and from his continental campaigns, there was criticism of the ship’s domestic arrangements. The most startling of these was that the galley was the wrong way round with the fire hearth facing the magazine. Careful inspection of the model reveals this very feature.
The Peregrine Galley shared the Danby reputation for fast sailing, and the hull form was to be very influential in the half-century that followed. As late as 1756, when the first 12pdr frigates were being designed, the Richmond class were based on this form. This design in turn was repeated in 1801 so Danby’s influence on cruiser design could be said