Victory vs Redoutable

The rating system

The basic design of British, French and Spanish ships of the line was the same, though most British shipwrights admitted the superiority of French designs, a fact supported by the frequency with which British vessels were either copied after their Frenchcounterparts or were themselves captured French ships commissioned into the service of the Royal Navy after a minimum of alterations. A French 120-gun ship, the Marseilles, captured at Toulon in 1793, particularly impressed her captors, one of whom found her ‘lines uncommonly fine’ and considered her ‘a good sea boat’. She also sailed remarkable well: ‘notwithstanding her immense size,’ he continued, ‘she worked and sailed like a frigate.’ Indeed, throughout the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, French ships were observed by British captains and crews to be faster and to steer more effectively. One British captain noted that ‘the ships of France and Spain are generally superior to those of England, both in size, weight of metal and number of men, outsailing them in fleets, and often in single ships, carrying their guns higher out of the water, and in all other respects better found for the material of war.’ Such opinions were by no means universal, but they had many advocates, who argued that the essential advantage of the French ship of the line lay in its size and dimensions. One British observer wrote:

I am of the opinion that all the ships of the present navy are too short, from ten to thirty feet according to their rates. If ships in future were to be built so much longer as to admit of an additional timber between every port, and if the foremost and aftermost gunports were placed a greater distance from the extremities, they would be stronger and safer, and have more room for fighting their guns.
(Lavery, Ship of the Line, i, pp. 123–124)

Whatever their nationality, large vessels were divided into six different classes, or rates, according to the number of guns they carried, a system known in the Royal Navy as ‘rating’. Having said this, the larger vessels were divided into six separate rates, one to six, according to the number of guns they carried. Smaller vessels were designated as ‘unrated’. In the French Navy ships of the line or vaisseaux consisted of ships mounting 118, 110, 80, and 74 guns, and those with between 54 and 74 guns. Of these, the 74 was the most numerous. Below these came frigates, corvettes and various other types types of vessel. In the Spanish Navy, ships of the line carried 120, 112, 94, 74–80, 64–68, 58–64, and 50 guns, with those mounting 74–80 guns being by far the most numerous. As with the French, the only other rating – if indeed the term can be applied to such a large range of ship types – consisted of frigates, corvettes, xebecs and a host of lesser vessels. In all three navies this armament referred only to ‘great’ or ‘long’ guns – what today are commonly, though erroneously, called ‘cannon’ (and therefore excludes carronades, which will be described later). Ships of the line in British service constituted only the first three rates, in contrast to frigates, which were classed as fourth rates of 50 to 60 guns, frigates, mounting 28 to 44 guns, classed as fifth rates and which, though present at Trafalgar, did not exchange fire there, sixth rate post ships mounting between 20 and 28 guns, and a host of unrated vessels including sloops, brigs and gunboats. The ships of the line present at Trafalgar ranged in armament from the ubiquitous 74 to the massive, four-decked, 136-gun Santisima Trinidad.

With the sole exception of that Spanish behemoth, the armament mounted on a ship of the line stood on two or three decks with the heaviest guns on the lowest deck and the lighter pieces placed progressively higher so as to prevent the ship from heeling over and capsizing. It is important to note that, in all three navies, this armament referred only to ‘great’ or ‘long’ guns – British three-deckers, the largest of the first rates, carried 32-pounder guns on the lower gun deck, 24-pounders on the middle deck and 18- or 12-pounders on the upper gun deck and quarterdeck, supplemented with carronades. A first rate carried 100–120 guns, with a weight of both broadsides of 2,500lb (1,134kg). A second rate mounted 90–98 guns with a weight of broadside of 2,300lb (11,043kg), and a third rate ship had 74 guns or more, with a weight of broadside of 1,764lb (800kg). Most of the ships at Trafalgar were 74s.