The Frigate

It's guns ranged from 36 to 24

This is a continuation of Naval History following on from: "Order of Ships"

The very mention of the name brings us up against one of the major difficulties which beset the students of old ships-the problems raised by ships'-selection of names in this field. It is indeed a puzzling subject, and there is no place here for a lengthy examination of it.

To the ordinary reader even the difficulties are not revealed. When he hears of a "galley," he conjures up a picture of a long, low, light ship whose principle means of propulsion is the oar. He is right in the main, because it is the most widely accepted sense of the word.

But it is not the only sense in which it is used, or "galleass," which resulted from the Spaniards to combine oar-propulsion and the broadside. The men of Henry VIII's day used both "galley" and "galleass" to describe ships which were sailing ships, in the early Tudor Times.

"Galleon" is a difficult word to understan properly; and the accepted meaning is the wrong one; for most people associate the word with Spain, and they conjure up a picture of a "stately Spanish galleon," a great Round Ship, highly charged fore and aft, moving through the tropics at a leisurely pace with a cargo hold full of "gold."

Dr R. C. Anderson, a leading authority described the real galleon as a "sailing ship-usually a four-masted with the ordinary rig of the time, but rather straight and flat with a beak-head low down like a galley's, instead of overhanging the forecastle of a ship.

So the picture conjured up, is not a galleon at all. It is, the type which the galleon superseded. It may be classed with Henry VIII's own early efforts, like the "Henry Grace 'a Dieu," Which was a "Great Ship."

The real galleon was much more like the "Grand Mistress" or the "Anne Gallant." Nor is it wise to associate the galleon with Spain. It is clear that, far from being one of the earliest of sea-users to have galleons, she was actually the last.

Similar difficulties face us when we consider the Frigate. There are at least six different types of ships, to which this name has been applied, at some time or another.

Order of Ships

The Fregata

The earliest "Fregata" was a purely Mediterranean specimen-a small oared vessel more like a galley than anything else; perhaps it was a tender to a galley.

By Drakes time the Frigate had reached England, from the West Indies. It is possible that he imported it himself. But it has meanwhile discarded its oars, and become a small, though long and fleet, ship more like a small version ot the true galleon.

By the middle of the seventeenth century, there were Frigates in the fleets of all the great sea-users, but their exact nature is something of a mystery.

The "Constant Wawick," built in 1645 by Peter Pett from designs of a ship captured from the Dunkirkers, has somehow got itself hallowed by tradition as the "first English Frigate." The "Constant Warwick" appeares to have been an ordinary, small, low-decked ship just like other two-decked ships of the time.

The word Frigate was not intended to convey a measure of size, for the biggest of all Cromwellian ships, the "Naseby," is often called a "Frigate." Perhaps the true answer raised by the "Frigate" is that the word refers to some idiosyncrasy of build which differentiated it from the true "ship." If so, that idiosyncrasy is now lost.

We come now to the ordinary person's Frigate-the kind, which under the "gallant Captain Broke," was waiting outside Boston Harbour on that famous morning in June1813 when the "Chesapeake," a super-frigate, came sailing out amidst the cheers of all good Bostonians.

This type too had evolved from something else, but this time it was English-a very small two decker whose lower deck housed few if any guns, but instead a tier of oars. This sort had lasted, well into the eighteenth century, and was a late survival of oar propulsion in a ship of any size. For really small ships the oar remained throughout until the Sail Triumphed in the end.

Nelson loved the Frigates

"Was I to die at this moment 1798, want of frigates would be found stamped on my heart."

By the middle of the eighteenth century all frigates were under sail. The first "class" of them-the first "Nelsonic" frigates- appeared during Anson's time, in 1756; they carried from 28 to 30 guns apiece on a single flush gun-deck, they were designed primarily for speed.

Their duties were many, their main task being "the eyes of the fleet." It was their absence, depriving him of the power to see where the enemy was, and, what they were doing, that Nelson deplored.

The fith type was when Steam and Iron were replacing, Sail and Wood, and when the admiralty was hesitating to discard the old for the new, it clung longest to its trusty "wooden walls"-the Line Ships. It experimented with the smaller ones-the Frigates.

The result was that all sorts of craft, propelled by steam and sometimes built of iron, appeared in the 1840s and 1850s under the name of frigates.

They were most of them unlike a Nelsonic frigate as any ship could be. Some of them were very large-the steam frigates of the '40s had a tonnage not far short of the "Victory's," while some of the foreign frigates of the period were even larger.

The French "La Gloire" was a frigate of 5,000 tons. The Austrian Flagship at Lissa in 1866, the "Ferinand Franz," was a "frigate" of 5,130 tons, while the Italians in that same battle had two "frigates" of 5,700 tons. So, it is only the name which is the same.

The last type, is a product of World War II. The Admiralty deliberately, conferred the name upon a special type of ship for the task of convoying; a ship as superior in power and size of a "Sloop" as the "Sloop" is superior to the "Corvette," a ship approximating in gun-power to a "Destroyer."

Though not so fast; a ship, finally, whose appearance upon the scene must have been as welcome to thousands of merchant seamen as ever "Frigate No.4" was to Nelson.

All six "Frigates" may have looked different, they all had many functional features in common. Each in its own way relatively small, relatively speedy and relatively mobile. Each was used mainly for purposes other than "Line" work, as scouting, patrolling or convoying.

If there were no such word as "Frigate" in the language of the sea, the Navy would have been the loser.

The Sloop

The "Sloop" is the smaller sister to the "Figate" and her duties ran parralell.

The rowed "Pinnace" of Henry VIII is her ancestor. Like the rowed "Frigate" she drops her oars and takes to sail, usually bearing the name at this time of her history of "Shallop." Thenceforth she follows the "Frigate" through all its phases.

In Nelson's time, she was enjoying, like her elder sister, her golden age; yet she was busying herself with much the same duties as she now performs; commerce protection, escort and patrol.

Unlike the "Frigate," she reappeared on quite a large scale in World War I, but they reassumed their relative positions when the latter was revived for the next great war.

The continuation of this Naval History will be: "Heart of Oak"

Thye Frigate Heart of Oak

"Pirates Trilogy" $20