Rating system of the Royal Navy

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There are six rating articles (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th) in the rating system of the Royal Navy.

A contemporary diagram illustrating a first and a third-rate ship.

The rating system of the Royal Navy was used by the Royal Navy between the 1670s and early 19th century to categorise sailing warships according to the number and of weight of their guns.

The system was set up in 1677 by Samuel Pepys, then Secretary to the Admiralty, who laid it down as a 'solemn, universal and unalterable' classification. The Rating of a ship was of administrative and military use. The number and weight of guns determined the size of crew needed, and hence the amount of pay and rations needed. It also indicated whether a ship was powerful enough to stand in the line of battle. Pepys's original classification was updated by further definitions in 1714, 1721, 1760, 1782 and 1801. On the whole the trend was for each rate to have a greater number of guns. For instance, Pepys allowed a First Rate 90-100 guns, but on the 1801 scheme a First Rate had 100-120. A Sixth Rate's range went from 4 to 18 to 20-28.

A First to Third Rate ship was regarded as a 'ship-of-the-line'. The Fourth Rate, of about 50 guns on two decks, was a ship-of-the-line until 1756, when it was felt that such ships were now too small for pitched battles.

The rated number of guns often differed from the number actually carried. Cannon (large, smooth-bored, muzzle-loading guns) were counted towards the rating, but not carronades (short guns which were half the weight of equivalent long guns), although rated vessels could carry up to twelve 24- or 32-pounder carronades. During the Napoleonic Wars the correlation between formal gun rating and actual number of long guns or carronades carried by any individual vessel was theoretical at best.

Rating was not the only system of classification used. Early definitions required a "ship" to have three square-rigged masts. Vessels with less than three masts were sloops or brigs. Vessels were also sometimes classified by her captain. For instance, if a brig were assigned a post-captain as her commander, she would instantly become a frigate as this was the smallest vessel considered acceptable.

Although the rating system was only used by the Royal Navy, British authors might still use "first-rate" when referring to the largest ships of other nations or "third-rate" to speak of a French seventy-four. By the end of the 18th century, the rating system had mostly fallen out of common use, ships of the line usually being characterized directly by their nominal number of guns, the numbers even being used as the name of the type, as in "a squadron of three seventy-fours".

The rating system did not handle vessels smaller than the sixth rate, the remainder simply being "unrated". The larger of the unrated vessels were generally called sloops (but be warned that nomenclature is quite confusing for unrated vessels, especially when dealing with the finer points of "brig", "sloop-of-war", "corvette" and "post-ship" and whether any particular vessel is one, the other, or several of these at once). Sixth-rate ships were generally useful as convoy escorts, for blockade duties and the carrying of dispatches; their small size made them a bit unsuited for the general cruising tasks the fifth-rate frigates did so well.

1 Rating system as in force in the Napoleonic Wars
2 Other uses
3 References
4 See also

[edit] Rating system as in force in the Napoleonic Wars

Type	Rate	Guns	Gun decks	Men	Displacement in tonnes	In Commission 1794	In Commission 1814
Ship of the line	1st Rate	100-120	3	850 to 875	2,500	5	7
	2nd Rate	98	3	700 to 750	about 2,200	9	5
	3rd Rate	64 to 80	2	500 to 650	1,750	71	87
	4th Rate	50	2	320 to 420	about 1,000	8	8
Frigate	5th Rate	32 to 44	1 or 2	200 to 300	700 to 1,450	78	123
Frigate	6th Rate	20 to 28	1	140 to 200	450 to 550	32	25
Sloop-of-war	Unrated	16 to 18	1	90 to 125	380	76	360
Gun-brig or Cutter	Unrated	6 to 14	1	5 to 25	< 220

In 1817, the Royal Navy introduced a new rating system which included carronades in the count.

The rating system was again modified later based more on the size of the crew.

[edit] Other uses

The term first-rate has passed into general usage, as an adjective used to mean something of the best or highest quality available. Second-rate and Third-rate are also used as adjectives to mean that something is of inferior quality.

[edit] References

Michael Philips, Notes on Sailing Warships, 2000.
Military Heritage did a feature on frigates and included the British Rating System (John D. Gresham, Military Heritage, February 2002, Volume 3, No.4, pp. 12 to 17 and p. 87).
Rodger, N.A.M. The Command of the Ocean, a Naval History of Britain 1649-1815, London (2004). ISBN 0-713-99411-8