The man-of-war: a navy warship around 1715

What is a man-of-war?

In the 1700s, “man-of-war” (often written “man-o’-war”) simply meant a warship belonging to a navy and armed with cannon. Sailors used it for anything from a small frigate to a giant flagship, so it describes a ship’s job rather than its shape or sails. A merchant ship carried cargo; a man-of-war carried guns and fighting men.

The word never had an exact meaning. To sort its warships properly, the Royal Navy used a more precise system: the rates.

How did the Royal Navy rate its warships?

English warships were first grouped into “rates” in 1626, mainly to set how much the men aboard were paid. From about 1660 the rates were set by the number of guns a ship carried, and Samuel Pepys, the famous naval administrator, tidied the system in 1677. It was adjusted again in 1714 and 1721.

Roughly, around 1715:

• First and second rates were the giants, with about 90 to 100 guns on three gun decks.
• Third rates carried about 70 or 80 guns.
• Fourth rates carried 50 to 60 guns on two gun decks.
• Fifth and sixth rates were smaller ships with fewer guns; a sixth rate had a single gun deck.

After 1714, ships with fewer than 20 guns were not rated at all and were usually called sloops. The numbers were nominal, and the same ship could be re-gunned and change its count.

What is a ship of the line, and was a fifty-gun ship one?

In big sea battles, warships sailed one behind another in a single column called the line of battle, so each could fire a full broadside (all the guns on one side) at the enemy. By the late 1600s this was the British navy’s standard way of fighting. A “ship of the line” was a ship strong enough to take its place in that column.

Around 1715 the fifty-gun fourth rate did count, as the smallest of them. Royal Museums Greenwich describes its model of a 1719 fifty-gun ship as the smallest of the line-of-battle vessels. Ships kept growing, though, and by 1756 the fifties were judged too weak to stand in the line. That is why many modern books say only first to third rates were ships of the line: they are describing the later 1700s.

How big was a fifty-gun ship, and how many men sailed it?

The navy built its ships to fixed sizes called “establishments”. Under the 1706 Establishment a fifty-gun ship was 130 feet long on its lower gun deck and about 700 tons. Under the 1719 Establishment it grew to 134 feet and 755 tons.

Its guns sat on two full decks. The 1719 design carried twenty-two 18-pounders on the lower deck (the number is the weight of the iron ball each fired), twenty-two 9-pounders on the deck above, and six small 6-pounders on the raised decks at the back and front.

Working all those guns and sails took a lot of people. Records give a full crew of about 250 to 300 men, though some ships are listed with as few as 185. Compare that with a trading sloop, which might sail with fewer than ten. Fifty-gun ships could take a place in the line in wartime, but much of their working life was spent escorting merchant convoys.

What was life like on board a man-of-war?

Some sailors volunteered, but in wartime there were never enough. The law allowed press gangs to seize seamen and force them into the navy, and in practice other men were sometimes taken too. Pressing was at its height in the 1700s.

Food followed rules set under Pepys in 1677 that changed little for a century: each day a pound of hard ship’s biscuit and a gallon of beer, and each week salt beef and salt pork, dried peas, butter and cheese. In the West Indies a half pint of rum or brandy could replace the beer.

Hundreds of men lived crowded together between the guns. Discipline was strict, to keep order and prevent mutiny, and flogging was the most common punishment, with the whole crew often made to watch. Disease was a constant danger, including scurvy, caused by a diet without fresh fruit and vegetables.

Did men-of-war sail in the Caribbean?

Yes, though fewer than you might think. The Royal Navy had kept ships at Jamaica since the island was captured in 1655, with its headquarters at Port Royal, where the navy had a dockyard from 1675. Warships were also stationed at Barbados and Antigua to protect the islands and their trade.

In peacetime the force was small. Around 1716 to 1718, during the worst years of piracy, historian Colin Woodard counts just ten small navy ships between Newfoundland and Barbados, small frigates and sloops with no ship bigger than a fifth rate, and about half of them based at Port Royal. Pirates in small, shallow ships could also escape into shoal water where a bigger ship could not safely follow.

In wartime larger squadrons came. From 1726 a British fleet blockaded Portobelo for several years, and three of its commanders died of tropical disease one after another.

Which fifty-gun ship is famous from the pirate era?

HMS Swallow, a fifty-gun ship launched in 1703 and rebuilt in 1719, was sent to West Africa under Captain Chaloner Ogle to protect trade from pirates, and there it met Bartholomew Roberts. In February 1722 Ogle found Roberts’s two ships near Cape Lopez, in what is now Gabon. Roberts was killed by the Swallow’s fire, and his surviving crew surrendered. They were tried at Cape Coast Castle, and Ogle was knighted for the action, which Royal Museums Greenwich says makes him the only naval officer knighted for an action against pirates.

What happened to old warships?

Wooden ships wore out. Many old fifty-gun ships were rebuilt in the dockyards and kept their names. Others were broken up for their timber. Some were sold. A 1695 letter from the Admiralty to the Navy Board, which built and repaired the King’s ships and ran the dockyards, mentions a royal order for the sale of several of the King’s old ships and stores. Even a fifty-gun ship built in 1712 was eventually sold out of the navy, in 1749.