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Beardless posted:I've always read that the American frigates, the USS Constitution and her sister ships, were built to be bigger and more heavily armed than anyone else's frigates. Yes. A book I read suggested a specific reason for their overbuilding - British frigates equipped 18 lb cannons at the time, and American metallurgy could not make an 18 lb cannon of sufficient strength. They could however make a suitable 24-lb cannon, and decided to equip the ships with plenty to ensure they had an advantage. The other factor was that ships of the line were too expensive to build and man, so a handful of super-frigates could still fight a good portion of any enemy navy without being completely shut out. As mentioned, their record ended up being mixed in practice since the British still had overwhelming superiority and they still made mistakes sometimes. Additionally, some frigates were built to a 44-gun standard, and others were built to a more reasonable 30-some gun size, so not all the original frigates were so oversized. Another interesting thing is that while they were allegedly designed for an armament primarily of 24-lb cannons, the captains had a lot of leeway and many installed extra cannons, which sometimes negatively affected performance. Chesapeake notably replaced the cannons with short-range carronades which was a factor in her getting captured when her rigging was shot away and she was unable to return fire.
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Dec 7, 2020 18:18
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Zorak of Michigan posted:In frigate chat, nobody's mentioned Humphreys' diagonal bracing system, which made the US frigates far less vulnerable to hogging than other designs of the time. I always thought that was a big deal, but this is far from my strongest subject. The book I linked touches on hogging and suggests overloading the frigates caused some of them to perform less well. However, I don’t remember if it touches on that as it’s been a long time since I read it. I found it to be detailed and very enjoyable if you’re into age of sail stuff (which I am), not sure really how well researched it is but it was a fun read and I’m not sure there’s better books on the topic.
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Dec 7, 2020 19:31
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Cythereal posted:The Navy is all about rum, sodomy, and the lash. And no one drinks rum anymore. All you can get now is a cup of Joe. (Not sure this is really the origin of the phrase though.)
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Dec 7, 2020 20:05
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