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Thread: Class of Ships present at Trafalgar

  1. #1

    Default Class of Ships present at Trafalgar

    I was reading some Stats for Trafalgar, and I wanted to see the ship classes listed along with the rates and guns.

    Does anyone know if such a list exists, links, etc.

    I recall a lot of great compilations have been presented by our members, but I don't recall a list that specific for Trafalgar.

    I am sure I am not the only person who would enjoy this.

    Maybe the same resource would include other battles.

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    Quote Originally Posted by TexaS View Post


    That is a great list, but the ship class is not included, such as the Victory being a Royal George class of ship.

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    They do list ship classes in some cases, but you have to click on the name of each ship to see it in the next page that opens up. Including an extra column with ship classes would have been nice, too bad they didn't do so?

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    Another very good site (my favorite) is:
    http://threedecks.org/index.php?disp..._battle&id=157

    As with the one mentioned above, you will need to click on the ship name to get ship specific data.

    Best of luck with your research.

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    Actually, Victory is not a Royal George--she's a one-off, keel initially laid using RG draughts but basically a Slade 74 on anabolic steroids.

    Here's what I have so far... Existing, announced or close-enough in bold, announced with reservations in italic.
    Rating British French Spanish
    1st 1745 Est 100-gun: HMS Britannia
    Mod 1745 Est 100-gun: HMS Victory
    RS/Umpire 100-gun: 1786 HMS Royal Sovereign
    SP one-off 136 Nuestra Senora de la Santisima Trinidad
    SP Santa Ana 112-gun: Santa Ana, Principe de Asturias
    SP Rayo 100-gun: Rayo
    2nd 1797 Neptune 98-gun: HMS Neptune, HMS Temeraire, HMS Dreadnought
    London 98-gun: HMS Prince
    3rd ex-FR Tonnant 80-gun: HMS Tonnant
    Slade Common 74: Defence, Bellerophon, Defiance, Thunderer
    Canada 74-gun: HMS Orion
    Ajax 74L: HMS Ajax (SGN104)
    ex-FR Temeraire/clone 74: Spartiate, Belleisle, Achille
    one-off 74 Revenge
    Colossus 74: HMS Colossus
    Courageux 74: HMS Leviathan, HMS Minotaur
    Mars-cl and mod Mars 74: HMS Mars, HMS Conqueror
    Swiftsure-cl 74-gun SOL: HMS Swiftsure (NOT a Slade)
    Intrepid-cl 64-gun SOL: HMS Polyphemus
    Inflexible-cl 64-gun: HMS Africa
    Ardent-cl 64-gun SOL: HMS Agamemnon
    FR Tonnant 80-gun: Formidable, Indomptable
    FR Bucentaure 80-gun SOL: Bucentaure, Neptune
    FR Temeraire 74-gun SOL: Scipion, Duguay-Trouin, Mont-Blanc, Aigle, Achille, Algesiras, Fougueux, Argonaute, Redoutable, Heros, Pluton
    FR ex-UK Slade 74: Berwick, Swiftsure
    SP Montanes 80-gun SOL: Neptuno, Montanes, Monarca, Argonauta
    SP San Pedro de Alcantara upgun 64->74: Bahama
    Ildefonsino 74: SP San Ildefonso, FR Intrepide
    SP San Juan Nepomuceno and related 74: San Agustin, San Francisco de Asis, San Juan Nepomuceno, San Justo
    SP “Landa 64”: San Leandro
    5th 1795 Amazon 38 frigate: HMS Naiad
    Apollo 36 frigate: HMS Euryalus
    Phoebe 36 frigate: HMS Phoebe (both SGN103 near)

    Sirius 36 frigate (based on ex-FR Minerve HMS San Fiorenzo): HMS Sirius
    FR Coquille 40-gun frigate: Themis
    FR Virginie 40-gun frigate: Cornelie, Rhin
    FR Hortense 40-gun frigate: Hortense, Hermione (both SGN105)
    Unrated 8-gun schooner HMS Pickle
    ex-FR 10-gun cutter Entreprenante
    FR Abeille 16/18-gun brig: Furet
    FR Vigilant 16-gun brig: Argus

    ThreeDecks is generally very good, but inconsistent, incomplete and occasionally has transcription errors--for example, based on an error in their pages Ares once asked me about a French captured UK Portland as a 64 which I had to reply with "I have the book they cite for that and it's a mistranscription--never went above a 50 or maybe 52." If memory serves, I actually have a thread in my "Historical Orders of Battle" series about this one... I also don't just look at "class" but related design families--many designers liked to iterate on existing designs rather than go back to clean sheets of paper, this explains why the 1744 French Invincible (the ancestor of almost all Thomas Slade's 74's and a half-dozen of his 64s) didn't see its final derivative built until 1811 with the three-decker HMS Union, a slightly-downgunned but dimensionally and structurally identical near-sister to Victory.
    Last edited by Diamondback; 06-08-2015 at 21:30.

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    David, thanks for the input. I had seen this site but dismissed it as I didn't click on the ships name. That is quite a lot of info compiled on each. Wow!

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    Diamondback, as always, you have the 'Skinny' on ships stats. Thanks for sharing. It is a pity that other reference lists don't have this tied in with their charts so you don't have to go searching for it.

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    DB, please remind me - have you uploaded the various charts you have assembled? You do great work.
    “You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.” ― Plato

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    Thanks, Eric--actually they're coded as tables right into the post they appear in. I could very easily convert them to Excel and upload them to the Files section, though... Orders of Battle I usually start as a Word doc, makes for easier copy-pasting of the raw data which gets deleted as I reformat it into the table.

    Erin, the part that doesn't help is that the concept of "class" as "built to common plans," along with "standardized designs" is a relatively recent concept--phase-in started around the 1760s in Britain and France, and before that individual Master Shipwrights at building yards were told "here's your dimensional requirements, here's what the gundecks need to be laid out to take, design and build as you see fit to meet those requirements."

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    Looking forward to seeing _Rayo_, for no other reason than her Captain was Irish (Henry Macdonnell, whose first name was usually rendered "Enrique").

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    Diamondback, You are right about ThreeDecks - very good, incompletes in some areas, etc.

    But Erin's thread may be a good starting place for us to post good references we all could use. Best would be what is available on the web and that we all would have access to, but book references would be OK. There are a number of things I look for in my research of ships involved in a battle. Class of ship is one, but also broadside weight (I convert the various nations pounds to kg's [to three decimal points] for consistency in comparison), Crew strength (on day of battle if possible), Length of ship at Gun deck (converted to meters to the 4th decimal point), rating (in the British rating system.)
    I've started working on Trafalgar myself for next year's Enfilade! 2016.

    Here are a couple of good Spanish web sites I've found:

    http://www.todoababor.es/articulos/index_traf.htm
    Good Spanish source of information on the Battle of Trafalgar.

    http://www.batalladetrafalgar.com/esp.htm
    Excellent source of information on Spanish ships at Trafalgar. Probably enough to put you in information overload.

    http://www.batalladetrafalgar.com/artilleria.htm
    Good breakout of guns of the Spanish ships.

    There appears to be a point of contention on the number of carronades on the ships at the battle. (Would be rather important considering the close in action for much of the battle.) One of the Spanish sites lists the amount of ammunition on each of the Spanish ships [VERY good record keeping!] Several of the SOL didn’t carry any carronade ammunition.

    I know we have many out there that like doing the research (I'm one of them!) - How about posting your reference/source material?

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    My primary data sources:
    David Lyon and Rif Winfield - The Sail & Steam Navy List (covers the Royal Navy from Napoleon's final defeat to just before the coming of turret Dreadnoughts--useful as a "snapshot" at game's end and what was left)
    Rif Winfield - British Warships in the Age of Sail 1714-1792 (the BWAS series builds on S&SNL, but is better detail-wise)
    From those, I fill in with ThreeDecks then search individual ships on Wikipedia as an interim stopgap until Barnes & Noble and Naval Institute Press perform a Cranio-Rectal Extraction on making e-editions of the rest of the _WAS series available--Ares relies on ThreeDecks, frankly over-relies on it just a bit IMO.

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