282

HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE.

tlic inferior rates, to carry the rage of enlargement beyond certain limits : as forinstance, to build a ship, contrived to carry only 20 guns, and intended solelyas a vessel of war, that should be of eight hundred or a thousand tons burthen.But although such an establishment, were the same proportion regularly preservedthrough the higher classes, would render the first and second rates unwieldly ifnot unmanageable, even if the construction of them should not prove impractica-ble ; yet it cannot be maintained or thought, for a single moment, as improperthat the dimensions of a 20 gun ship might not, wkh the utmost propriety, beincreased from four to five hundred tons; of a medium frigate from six hundredand fifty, to nine hundred ; of one in the highest class of the same rate fromseven hundred and fifty, which was nearly the tonnage of the Venus, built in175 8, to a thousand tons, which, with the addition of two guns only to theforce, has been the general establishment for more than ten years past. Such anaugmentation has been experimentally found of singular advantage, owing to therncreasc of-convenience in working the guns during the time of action, and to itsrendering the vessels themselves better able to withstand the furious assaultsof the winds and weaves. The benefits arising from this enlargement have inno instance been more sensibly felt, than in the ships of 7 4 guns, which,particularly in all the recent wars, have uniformly constituted the strengthof fleets. The addition of three hundred tons to vessels nominally of thesame classs, without some examination of the propriety, and a retrospect view ofthe detects of one, compared with the excellencies of the other, might either beconsidered as erroneous, or, at hest, as unnccssary. It is therefore to be re-membered, that practice and experience have afforded repeated instances,where ships of the old and inferior establishment, such as the Ajax and Fame,with some others, have most sensibly and mortilyingly felt their inferiority, eitherwhen opposed to ships of the same rate belonging to the enemy, or when joinedin the same operations with those in the service of Britain, built according to tireencreased, and newly adopted regulation *.

* The British ships of 74 guns, built according to the old principles, in many instances, whena heavy sea has been 1 uniting, or the wind blowing fresh, and the enemy to leeward, have been un-able to fight any of their lower deck guns, while the French ships, owing to their enlarged breadthand encreased sihFncss, have had it in their power not only to open their lower ports, but to remain per-fectly upright, and fight their guns with nearly as much facility as their antagonists would have donehad-the wind and sea been perfectly calm.

In