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 frigates

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

Red Sea charted by the Royal Navy

1800-9

Naval attacks

• 1820 - Mocha bombarded until the Imam accepted a commercial treaty

• 1827-32 - Berbera blockade until compensation was obtained for an attack on British shipping

Number of pirate ships in the Straits of Malacca

100

Europeans captured by the Barbary States between the 16th and 19th centuries

1-1.25 million

Amount American government paid in ransom to Barbary States in 1795

$1 million

Number of Sardinians taken as slaves in a single raid in 1798

900

Bombardment of Algiers 1816

• 50,000 cannonballs

• Over 40 vessels sunk

Bey of Algiers response to attack

• Repaid over £80,000 in ransom money

• Freed 3000 slaves

Subsequent suppression of piracy in Algiers

• 1820 - Britain bombarded Algiers again

• 1830 - France conquered Algiers

Proportion of Royal Navy ships lost 1803-15 that ran aground on dangerous coastline or sank at sea

223/317

Cook’s circumnavigation of the globe

1768-1771

Hydrographic Office

Established in 1795 to collate reliable charts

First Admiralty Chart published

1801

Retention of Gibraltar

1783

Size of navies in 1781

• French, Spanish and Dutch combined navies - 137

• Royal Navy - 94

Franco-Spanish assault on Gibraltar September 1782

• 5000 men on 'floating batteries'

• 18 ships of the line

HMS Suffolk

• Sailed to India in four months in 1794

• Proved citrus fruits prevented scurvy

Acquisition of Ceylon, Cape Town and Malta

1815

Capture of Ceylon

Immediately yielded £300,000 of money and goods

Peace of Amiens 1802

• Ceylon retained by the British

• Cape Town and Malta returned to the Dutch

Acquisition of the Falkland Islands

1833

British sealing ships in the South Atlantic in the early 19th century

Over 70

Acquisition of Aden

1839

People living in Aden in 1800

Fewer than 1000

Support sent by Farish in 1838

• 2 frigates

• 700 troops

Deficit ran up by Haines

£28,000

Haines' trial for fraud and embezzlement

1854

Acquisition of Cyprus

1878

Russian expansion into central Asia

• 1865 - Tashkent

• 1868 - Samarkand

• 1868 - Bukhara

Russo-Turkish War

1877-8

Money Disraeli persuaded parliament to approve to prepare the navy and army for war

£6 million

Cyprus Convention

• Island leased to Britain by the Ottoman Empire for £92,799 annually

• Disraeli insisted that the taxes were sent to London to pay debts from the Crimean War

Disraeli's subsequent acquisitions

• 1877 - Transvaal

• 1878 - Afghanistan

• 1879 - Zululand

The Kent

Launched as an experimental steamship in 1794

Demologos

American ship becomes the first steam-powered warship in 1816

First steam-propelled frigates launched

1843 - Britain
1845 - France

Ironclad warships

1859 - France
1861 - Britain