But the frigates were built for a different work. They were the cruisers of a hundred years ago. They were the commerce destroyers, the raiders. A frigate was a ship which carried guns on the main deck and on one gun-deck below. Sometimes they sailed with other ships, but more often played their game alone. The Constitution was one of these, and an important one. Not only did she win battles: also she affected the design of ships.
She was launched in 1797, and was, actually, an improvement on the frigates of the day. She was 204 feet long, 43.6 feet broad, and she carried thirty 24-pounders on her gun-deck, twenty-two 32-pound carronades on the quarter deck and forecastle deck, besides three “bow chasers” or long guns for use when pursuing a fleeing ship. Thus she had fifty-five guns (although later this was reduced) and consequently far outclassed foreign frigates of the day. They carried from thirty-two to fifty guns, and these of lighter weight. While the main battery of the Constitution consisted of 24-pounders, foreign frigates used 18-pounders. A 24-pound shot is naturally more effective than an 18-pound shot from the same type of gun.
But not only was the Constitution heavily armed. She was built of timbers of about the size of those used in line-of-battle ships, and so was much stronger than other frigates. As a matter of fact, she so outclassed the frigates of the British Navy that several line-of-battle ships were cut down until, technically, they became frigates, in order that they might meet her on more favourable terms.
A SUBMARINE
The Constitution was a more graceful ship than the Victory, as frigates, as a class, were more graceful than all line-of-battle ships. They required more speed, and so had finer lines. Their sides were not so high, their bows less bluff, their sterns more finely designed. Line-of-battle ships were hardly more than floating wooden forts, carrying as many guns as possible. Frigates were fine ships, having all the qualities of fine ships, and carrying modified batteries.
So regularly did the Constitution defeat other frigates, and so simply was she able to refuse battle with superior forces, that the British Navy profited by her advantages and built similar ships. But the end of the era of sail was approaching, and before much could be done in the further perfection of ships of this kind, new warships propelled by steam had come into being, throwing into the discard both the line-of-battle ships and the frigates of an earlier day.
Following the War of 1812 there were no engagements of great importance in which warships played a part until the Crimean War, in 1855. During this period both steam and iron had been utilized by the designers of warships, and navies had made the first of the great steps that changed the fleets of the world from the wooden sailing ships of Trafalgar to the steel monsters of Jutland.
Typical warships of the most improved design just prior to the Crimean War were not greatly dissimilar from the line-of-battle ships and frigates of the War of 1812 except that they used steam as well as sails. They were larger, it is true. Such a ship was the British Duke of Wellington. She was 240 feet long, 60 feet wide, and displaced 5,830 tons. Her engines were of 2,000 horse power, and her speed under power was a trifle less than ten knots (nautical miles per hour). She carried 131 guns on four decks. This arrangement of guns was similar to that formerly used on line-of-battle ships, which sometimes carried guns on the upper deck as well as on the three gun-decks below. She was, then, one of the line-of-battle ships of her day, although this term was changed about this time to “ships-of-the-line.” Other somewhat smaller ships, propelled by steam and sails and with guns placed similarly to those of the earlier frigates, had come to be called “steam frigates,” or sometimes still were called frigates. The Hartford, Admiral Farragut’s flagship at the Battle of Mobile Bay in the American Civil War, was of this type.
