The ships of seventy-four cannon, and thereabouts, are generally esteemed the most useful in the line of battle, and indeed in almost every other purpose of war. It has therefore been judged conformable to our design, to represent different views and sections of a ship of this class. Thus plate [IV]. exhibits the head, together with the bow or fore part. Plate [VII]. shews a transverse section through the broadest part, with the profile of her upper and lower deck batteries. Plate [III]. contains an horizontal section at the lower deck, together with the plan of the battery planted on one side thereof, and all the pieces by which the deck is supported on the other. The quarter, and all the after part of the ship, is exhibited in plate [VIII]. and the elevation of the stern in plate [X]. all of which are on the same scale, viz. one fourth of an inch to a foot, except the deck, which is one eighth of an inch to a foot.
We have also, on a smaller scale, expressed an elevation or side-view of a sixty-gun ship, in plate [I]. with the head thereof in plate [IV]. fig. 11. and the stern in plate [X]. fig. 2. both of which are viewed upon a line on the continuation of the keel.
Armed Ship. See Armed Ship.
Hospital-Ship, a vessel fitted up to attend on a fleet of men of war, and receive their sick or wounded; for which purpose her decks should be high, and her ports sufficiently large. Her cables ought also to run upon the upper deck, to the end that the beds or cradles may be more commodiously placed between decks, and admit a free passage of the air, to disperse that which is offensive or corrupted.
Leeward Ship. See Leeward.
Merchant-Ship, a vessel employed in commerce, to carry commodities of various sorts from one port to another.
The largest merchant-ships are those employed by the different European companies of merchants who trade to the East Indies. They are in general somewhat larger than our forty-gun ships: they are mounted with twenty cannon on their upper deck, which are nine pounders, and six on their quarter-deck, which are six pounders. Plate [IX]. fig. 5. represents a view of one of these vessels on the larboard bow, where a is the ensign-staff, A the mizen-mast, B the main-mast, C the fore-mast, K the poop, L L an awning of wood extending across the after part of the quarter-deck, M poop-ladder, N O steps of the gangway, P head of the capstern on the quarter-deck, Q R the skeeds on the gangway, r the belfry on the forecastle, s the timber-heads, y the cut-water, with a lion-head fixed upon it. The other parts of this ship represented in the figure are referred to from the explanations of the head, plate [IV]. and the quarter in plate [VIII].
Fig. 6. plate [IX]. exhibits a quarter view of a foreign-built East-Indiaman, with a square tuck, or perpendicular counter, and having three poop-lanthorns fixed on her taffarel.
Private Ship of war. See Privateer.
Store-Ship, a vessel employed to carry artillery or naval stores for the use of a fleet, fortress, or garrison.