Navy - key facts

1805 Battle of Trafalgar

Destruction of Franco-Spanish fleet

First and second rate ships of the line

• 3 gun decks

• 80-100 cannon

Fourth rate ships of the line

• Less than 64 cannon

• Phased out from the late 18th century

Third rate ships of the line

• 64-80 cannon

• Crew of 500

• 1794 - 76% of Royal Navy ships

• 1814 - 80% of Royal Navy ships

Frigate Speedy

Captain Cochrane captured or destroyed 53 French ships over 13 months in 1800-1

French frigates

• Built 59 fast frigates between 1779 and 1790

• The highest British merchant losses of the Napoleonic Wars were 619 ships lost in 1810, when French frigates attacked the Baltic trade

1708 Cruisers and Convoys Act

• A captain and his crew were entitled to shares of the value of a captured ship and its cargo

• A single capture could mean more than a year’s pay

Reduction of the Royal Navy

1815 - 214 ships of the line, 792 frigates

Reduced to 100 ships of the line and 162

1835 - 58 ships of the line

Nemesis

Sail-steamer used to dispatch multiple Chinese junks and tow more powerful sailships upriver in the 1840 opium war

Invention of more powerful propellor screw propulsion in the late 1830s

• Made ocean-going steam travel practical

• First steam-propelled frigates launched by Britain in 1843 and France in 1845

France launched the Napoleon in 1850

• 90-gun steam ship capable of reaching 14 knots without wind

• End of low-cost naval supremacy for Royal Navy

• France built 10 steam battleships and converted 28

• Britain built 18 battleships and converted 41

Paixhan guns

• Production began in 1820s

• French fitted them to warships from 1841

• Royal Navy quickly did the same

Ironclads

• 1859 - French warship La Gloire

• 1861 - HMS Warrior

• 1862 - use in American Civil War demonstrated their power

HMS Devastation

• Launched in 1873

• 87 metres long

• 2 35-tonne guns

• Hull armour 250-300mm thick

• Carried 1350 tons of coal

• Sailships abandoned

Naval Defence Act 1889

• Britain committed to 10 battleships, 42 cruisers and 18 torpedo gunships by 1893-4, costing £21.5 million

• Formalised the two power standard

• France and Russia increased their joint production to 12 battleships

• Germany and the USA accelerated construction

John Fisher

• First sea lord of the Admiralty in 1904

• Scrapped 154 older warships

• Largest and most modern ships concentrated in Europe

• Ideas culminated in HMS Dreadnought in 1906

Able seaman’s wage in 1794

£14 per year

French merchant ships captured in the Seven Years’ War

1165

Slave trade in the late 18th century

• Biggest and most lucrative route for British shipping

• Over 150 ocean-going ships left British ports annually on the triangular trade route

Deaths of slavers in 1785

Men leaving Britain on slaving voyages - 5000

Men who returned from slaving voyages - 2329

West Africa squadron

• 1808 - 2 ships to patrol 5000km of coastline

• 1821 - 6 ships

• 1831 - 7 ships

• 1847 - 32 warships

• 204/792 men died in 1829

Annual number of slaves shipped across the Atlantic

• 1800 - 80,000

• 1830 - 135,000

The Presidente

• Captured in 1828 after flying a Buenos Aires flag and then a French flag

• Its crew spoke English and had anglicised names

Regulo and Rapido

Spanish slavers threw 150 chained slaves overboard in 1831 while being chased by the Royal Navy

HMS Hydra

Paddle steamer that captured four slave ships between 1844 and 1846

Black Joke

Slave clipper captured by the Royal Navy which then captured 11 slavers in a single year

Slaves captured and freed by Royal Navy 1810-60

• 150,000

• Only 10% of total

Prizes captured by French privateer Robert Surcouf

• Over 40

• 16 in a single expedition in 1807-8

Isle de France

Captured by British in 1810 and renamed Mauritius