Invincible - how the French gave the world the 74

Invincible - how the French gave the world the 74

This is a pretty interesting story.

https://www.philipkallan.com/single-...e-world-the-74

Well.. not really. The British were already using the 'common' 74 - with the 32pdr main battery and 18pdr upper deck, with 9pdrs on the castles*. The Invincible was larger - by around 5ft, than this 'common' 74, and although the British did build one large 74 to that design (with British scantlings) - the Triumph - which they gave an increased upper battery of 24pdrs to - they continued to build the smaller 74s nearly exclusively throughout the next 70 years. The middling and large 74s, and the '80s' of the larger French pattern, were relatively scarce (though fairly important, being nearly as powerful as the 90/98 gun ships). The manning requirement of the larger 74s were 100 men more than those of the small classes - while the increase in throw weight didn't make up enough for the fewer ships which could be manned well.

The first British 74, was the Culloden, which was essentially a reduced '80', and was in construction in 1744 - 3 years before the Invincible was captured, and had been ordered even before that ship was launched.
The British ship Namur, present in the action was also another '74' this one a razeed 90 gunner, with the same armament and similar size to the common 74 the British used (around 4 ft smaller than the most common patterns).
It is certainly not supportable that the British were unaware of the '74' type if they took one into the action in which they "discovered" the type.

Actually, most of the Common 74s do trace their roots to Invincible. Slade started by scaling down the proportions to create Dublin, then successively iterated on it through the Hero, Hercules, Bellona, Arrogant, Elizabeth, Edgar and Culloden classes. Similarly, Triumph/Valiant were later evolved into the stretched Kent/Ajax, which in turn the Russians used as the basis for one of their last Napoleonic 74 designs, the Triokh Sviatitelei class IIRC.

Additionally, the design was further scaled down into the St. Albans 64's, and enlarged with a third gundeck to create Victory.

There were unrelated competitive designs b other designers, but you still have to admit that the combination of Pierre Morineau's hullform and Thomas Slade's structural engineering produced one hell of a family tree.

Interesting discussion gentlemen. You have raised some very good points about the article, and the reasons for not all 74s being equal in fighting and sailing qualities.

Rob.

It's also interesting to note that most of the "second generation" 74's saw a similar development process starting with a captured one-off--1761 Courageux and the resulting marriages of French hullform to British scantlings mixed across Common, Middling and Large including the Forty Thieves.