Cyrus-class post ship

Class overview
Name:	Cyrus-class post ships
Operators:	Royal Navy
Completed:	16
General characteristics
Type:	Sixth-rate post ship (later rated as ship sloops)
Tons burthen:	454 80/94 (as designed)
Length:	115 ft 6 in (35.20 m) (gundeck) 97 ft 2 in (29.62 m) (keel)
Beam:	29 ft 8 in (9.04 m)
Depth of hold:	8 ft 6 in (2.59 m)
Propulsion:	Sail
Sail plan:	Full rigged ship
Complement:	135
Armament:	UD: 20 × 32-pounder carronades and 2 × 6-pounder chase guns

The Cyrus-class sixth rates of the Royal Navy were a series of sixteen post ships built to an 1812 design by Sir William Rule, the Surveyor of the Navy. The first nine ships of the class were launched in 1813 and the remaining seven in 1814. The vessels of the class served at the end of the Napoleonic War. They were built on the lines of HMS Hermes, which was based in turn on the French ship Bonne Citoyenne.

The Cyrus class was intended to be the counter to the new Frolic class ship-rigged sloops that were under construction for the United States Navy. No encounter took place between any vessel of the Frolic class and one of the Cyrus class, but HMS Levant was captured by the American frigate USS Constitution^[1]

With the re-organisation of the rating system which took place in the Royal Navy effective from 1 January 1817, the Cyrus class flush-decked ships were re-classified as 20-gun sloops.

Ships in class

Notes

References

• Gardiner, Robert (1996). The Naval War of 1812. Caxton pictorial history. ISBN 1-84067-360-5. 
• Rif Winfield, British Warships in the Age of Sail, 1793-1817, Chatham Publishing, London 2005.