Subject:
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Re: Whish class of ship is the largest?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.pirates
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Date:
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Wed, 8 Mar 2000 18:36:54 GMT
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Viewed:
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747 times
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Hi,
I looked at the subject line and thought someone'd had a bit too much
of the grog...*hIc!*
Bruce Schlickbernd wrote:
> In lugnet.pirates, Jonathan Wilson writes:
> > Which class of ship is the largest? A man of war? Was there anything
> > larger?
>
> 1st class ship-of-the-line, 100 guns plus. Ships-of-the-line were rated 1st
> through 4th class. Frigates were 5th and 6th (The American super-frigates
> could be argued to be 4th class, I imagine). Everything else was unrated (by
> the British system, at least). I'm not sure when this rating system began - so
> earlier periods (more appropriate to Piracy anyway, 1550-1700) may have used
> different nomenclature.
There were some real monsters among those first-rates, however. I remember, in
particular, the French ship L'Orient, which was *rated* at 120 guns--but in fact
probably carried 140 at the time of her demise at the Battle of the Nile in 1798
(she blew up--go figure, there was lots of powder aboard). I'm not sure anything
ever got bigger than that, though--wood as a building material had a lot of
limitations, both in size of single pieces and in resistance to torque. (Of
course, it also had a lot of strengths too, when compared against early iron
hulls--one reason why you saw a lot of opposition to wholly-iron hulls.)
"Man of War," by the way, is a generic term for combat ships; it's also the name of
a big nasty floating blob with lots of dangly tentacles, which is probably more
formidable than the actual Portuguese men of war were. Yeeeow!
best
Lindsay
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Whish clash of ship is the largesht?
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| (...) Oh hey, I'll drink to that! Whish way ish the grog? Captain Morgan, I hope. (...) (by (...) so (...) in (...) fact (...) 1798 (...) anything (...) name of (...) more (...) Gun ratings were the golf-handicaps of their day. :-) I remember the (...) (25 years ago, 8-Mar-00, to lugnet.pirates)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Whish class of ship is the largest?
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| (...) through 4th class. Frigates were 5th and 6th (The American super-frigates could be argued to be 4th class, I imagine). Everything else was unrated (by the British system, at least). I'm not sure when this rating system began - so earlier (...) (25 years ago, 8-Mar-00, to lugnet.pirates)
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