Sailing warships

>>33084570
You just started a DEX vs STR thread

I hope you enjoy your 300+ replies

>>33084570

That depends on what you want to do. While the HMS Victory will never be able to catch up to the USS Constitution, the USS Consitution will never be able to sink the HMS Victory.

>>33084570
Maybe you should look up what happened at Las Aves before you ask this

>>33084570
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_War

The seawater gained or loss in a pitched battle is unimportant. Only what is destroyed or captured or ships that are blocked, delayed or prevented from acting in a manner.

It doesn't matter if a ship is fast if it cannot threaten warships, raid merchants or enforce or break blockades.

Once you have enough speed, more isn't going to make much difference. Plus larger ships might be able to mount larger weapons to a greater effective range.

Finally ship speed tends to be limited by the hull length with longer ships being faster, you can have a very large, very heavy ship with a long waterline that is much faster than a smaller ship.

>>33084595
go back to >>>/tg/ or you might learn something about reality.

>>33084742
>Finally ship speed tends to be limited by the hull length with longer ships being faster, you can have a very large, very heavy ship with a long waterline that is much faster than a smaller ship.
Up to a point. A frigate is still going to outsail a 74 eight days a week. It will lie closer to the wind and will fly downwind faster. Weight above the waterline still heavily affects sailing qualities, especially when it's a hundred plus tons of cannon two decks over the waterline. This is why a razee was such an incredible sailer, but before being cut down was a total pig.

The real answer to this >>33084570 question is both. Always both. You need the brigs and sloops, colliers and packets. The small, swift guys. You need these to communicate across your homeland and colonies, to regulate your own shipping and harass and capture the enemy's merchantmen. You need them to help find the enemy, track them and eventually meet them with your own line of battle.

You need the frigates. Your 5th rates. You need these to screen for your fleet, perform reconnaissance in force, deal with enemy privateers and frigates raiding your shipping, operate autonomously to protect far flung colonies, perform cutting out raids against enemy shipping, etc. You need them to bat clean up at the big fleet actions after the enemy has broken to harass and capture their scattered ships.

You need the line of battle, your 4th to 1st raters (usually 74 gun 3rd rates). These guys you need to blockade the enemy ports, to keep their fatties home and away from fucking with your shipping or invading your colonies or homeland. You need these guys for serious gunboat diplomacy missions. But most of all, you need these guys for when the enemy gets out in strength and it's time to hoist FORM LINE OF BATTLE and ENGAGE THE ENEMY CLOSER and go nuts to noses against their liners.

CONT

>>33084570
>>33084742
>>33085970
There's a reason there used to be all those ship types. They all had a mission. Remember that the primary hurdle to any age of sail fleet was always communication, and the smaller ships, first and foremost, were the keys to effective communication across fleets, patrol areas and entire empires.

>>33084636
therefor the Constitution will never be able to attack or defend anything where the Victory is nearby. Frigates and even smaller vessels had only two advantages over any ship of the line:
1. They tended to have a bigger radius of operation due to their comparatively smaller crew. This made them reasonable effective in colonial warfare (i.e. raiding/enfording peace in small coastal towns that weren't defended by a proper fort, raiding undefended enemy merchant vessels,... - basically all the stuff you gotta do in some far away, godforsaken places around the world, be it Argentina, the Caribbean or India). Even then they had to bugger off tho if there were reports of an enemy ship of the line nearby. Overall, bigger ships would have been superior colonial fighters as well, but...

2. Big ships like the Victory were expensive as hell, both in constructing and in maintaining. Even the worlds' biggest navies like the French or the British could only afford a few first or second rate ships of the line. Frigates were comparatively cheap, so you could spam them to deal with threats around the world that didn't warrant sending such an overkill beast, binding its power and keeping it away from performing actual battles or blockades.

>>33084570
It depends.

>>33086172
also frigates were better for reconnaissance and communication (remember that written orders had to be delivered by ship)

>>33084570
why is that pic labelled Brig Niagara at full sail when not all of the sails are unfurled?

>>33088931
He was in the pool.

>>33088931
Note how close she's sailing to the wind, the yards almost fore and aft, spanker, jibs and jigger set. Now, two possible reasons why the foresail and mainsail would be clewed up in this sailplan yet she might still be under full sail:
>the spanker, jigger and jibs would be robbed of wind and the overall efficiency of wind thrust would be lessened. Remember, the wind is coming almost directly abeam. The spanker alone eats half the mainsail's wind if they set it.
>with the wind on the beam and light as it is, the ship handles better/gets more thrust/shows better seakeeping with the foresail and mainsail clewed

Being under full sail rarely means every rag set. It only means you've set the maximum number of sails for most efficient thrust, course holding, sea keeping and sail plan efficiency for the direction and strength of wind you're sailing under. That could mean a single reefed foresail if you're in a gale, or it could mean most everything set plus studding sails if you've a light to moderate wind under your coat tails.

>>33089060
>It only means you've set the maximum number of sails for most efficient thrust, course holding, sea keeping and sail plan efficiency for the direction and strength of wind you're sailing under.
Oh, and I should add the all important "not straining your yards, masts, sails or cordage more than necessary/prudent" to that list.

You play silly buggers flying every scrap of sail in a high wind, and you'll carry away half your sails, snap some of your rigging and probably drop a spar if you don't outright lose a top, t'gallant or royal mast, or even tear the sticks out of her outright. Especially if you're planning on changing tack.

>>33089060
>>33089122
Interesting, thanks!

>>33084570
Haven't you already learned this lesson in the war of 1812?

>>33084570

>What's more important in a classic naval battle? Speed or firepower?

In a class naval battle you have two types of ships:

Ships-of-the-Line and Frigates. Ships-of-the-Line are big, slow, and heavily armed. These ships were typically used for defending your own harbors and kept close to home because they were very expensive to operate, requiring a huge amount of manpower to keep the ship running. HMS Victory would probably be the most famous example. The ship was rated for 104 guns, including massive 32-pounder long cannons.

Frigates were smaller, faster, and less heavily armed. These ships were typically used to harass enemy shipping. They were cheaper to build and operate as well. The most famous example of this kind of ship would the USS Constitution, which was so formidable in battle that British frigates were ordered to not engage it unless they had a 3:1 numerical advantage. The Constitution is rated for 44 guns.

A frigate would be utterly doomed if it tried to fight against a ship-of-the-line. But if a ship-of-the-line tried to engage a frigate, the frigate would probably be able to use its superior speed and endurance to avoid to engagement completely. Ships-of-the-Line were typically kept close to home for defense, whereas frigates were used for scouting, raiding, harassment, etc.

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>>33084595

>>33084570
Range, firepower, speed.

This makes me want to watch Master and Commander again.

>>33084595
>DEX vs STR thread
dexterity vs strength? is that what that means?

>>33093228
Probably the best single film ever made about age of sail combat, daily life, operations and mindset.

The Hornblower series of films are also pretty ok.

The best reads about that stuff would be Patrick O'brian's Aubrey-Maturin series, hands down. The man wrote excellent literature with incredible detail and characters and based it all on historical accounts of specific Napoleonic war engagements. Superb. Then the Alexander Kent Bolitho and Hornblower books, which are less detailed and nuanced but more action oriented.

>>33090913

Wasn't part of the reason the Constitution was so horrifyingly effective because it was constructed with live oak and had an unusually large amount of guns for its class?

>>33093294
She and her sisters were called frigates, but they were really the first of a class of newer super-frigates. Something closer to a 4th rate than a 5th rate. Still not designed to stand in the line of battle, but capable of kicking the shit out of anything smaller than a 4th rate very handily, from long range and with very little damage. Some of the design points:
>access to massive amounts of old-growth hardwood timbers (live oak primarily in this case) allowed them to build her timbers thicker and better reinforced than anything else going, and this after the RN had already pretty much exhausted all the Kentish Oak and France, Spain and the Dutch had likewise more or less run very low on high quality ship-building timber
>she was braced very heavily, in an innovative way. Her support structure would have been suitable for a 3rd or 2nd rate ship. She was heavier, but also without the upper gun decks such a design would have usually supported, she was extremely fast, stiff, sailed close to the wind and had great seakeeping. Operationally, the closest thing to her would have been a razee cut down from a 74 to a 42-50, and even those didn't quite have her sailing qualities.
>compared to contemporary 28-36 gun frigates, her guns were all MUCH heavier, longer range and bigger payload. While Connie and her sisters were sporting 24 pounders and "Long Nines" (36-pounders) plus carronades as big as 64 pounders on chase/quarter ports, most frigates of the day were armed with a combination of 12- and 18-pounder broadsides plus heavy carronade and maybe Long Nine chasers.

The semi-modern equivalence would be like putting a New Orleans class CA up against an Alaska class CB, and calling it an equal fight because they're both heavy cruisers. In reality, you'd need two NO class CAs just to make it a serious engagement for an Alaska.

>>33093294
>>33093460
There must have been a lot of brown breeches in the Royal Navy when they realized the Constitution could bounce cannonballs off her hull.

>>33093292
I'll have to take a look into the books. Thanks anon.

>>33093488
That part's a bit exaggerated. It was more that she could fire punishing, crippling broadsides into contemporary British frigates from ranges at which their own armament was spent and would do negligible damage to the hull.

Furthermore, in close action, standard British practice was to double-shot their guns (and sometimes add a grape canister for good measure). Gun captains had also learned to cheat the powder charges a smidge when doubleshotting warm guns to lessen the risk of an exploding gun upon firing.

Slightly less propellant plus doubled projectile weight gets you much reduced projectile velocity. Now, this wouldn't be an issue at all against ships built just like theirs; in fact, it was usually devastating, turning the opposite gun deck into a slaughterhouse. Against Connie and her sisters, however, these lower-energy projectiles had a much harder time penetrating with enough energy to cause serious splinter havok within the deck.

Eventually, the RN admiralty issued fighting instructions that standard frigates (the RN was building their own 40+ gun frigates and cutting down 74s and 4th rates, too, by this point) not engage USN super-frigates unless having superior numbers, that they seek to close quickly to avoid being pounded to flotsam at range, and that they fire at maximum elevation using Langrage or chain shot to cripple the enemy's sailplan (like the French generally did in naval combat as opposed to the British practice of preferring to pound the hull). If successful, the USN frigate would be out of control and the British frigates could pass and rake her stern until she surrendered. If this didn't work, the only chance was to board them and pray for the best. That was the plan, anyway.

>>33093270
Yeah they're common character stats in RPG games

>>33084570
>Speed or firepower?
Sid Meir's Pirates says that the answer is speed.

>>33090913
>The most famous example of this kind of ship would the USS Constitution

the USS Constitutin isnt a very good example of a typical frigate though, the main reason for her success was that she was larger, more heavily built and more heavily armed than a typical frigate of the period.

more typical frigates would be the USS Chesapeake or HMS Shannon, both 28 gun frigates.

Short answer is how many guns the ship had. Other factors come in to play also like balls to use them and deception. Speed matters but wouldnt win battles.

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>>33095536

Yeah but when somebody hears the word "frigate" they aren't going to be thinking about the Chesapeake or Shannon.

I thought the most important aspect of a sail age warship was the ability of the crew to keep them in formation.

>>33095167

Sid Meier's Pirates says swordsmanship

>>33093294

The Constitution's legendary survivability can be attributed to its construction and armament. Being larger and more heavily armed than most frigates, the Constitution was able to engage the smaller British vessels from such distances they could not effectively return fire with their less powerful guns. Cannonballs fired from British frigates would often bounce off the sides of the Constitution's sturdy hull of pine and oak.

>>33096610
They are if they know fuck all about late age of sail naval ships. The Constitution represents a brief and transitory aberration of classic age of sail naval shipbuilding, really almost the perfect bookend to lead naval design into steam power and steel ships.

But she is not representative of the two and a half centuries of frigates which came before her.