The ''Snake-''class ship-sloops were a class of four

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against F ...

sloops-of-war In the 18th century and most of the 19th, a sloop-of-war in the Royal Navy was a warship with a single gun deck that carried up to eighteen guns. The rating system covered all vessels with 20 guns and above; thus, the term ''sloop-of-war'' enc ...

built in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.Winfield, Rif & Lyon, David (2004). '' The Sail and Steam Navy List: All the Ships of the Royal Navy 1815–1889''. London: Chatham Publishing. .

OCLC OCLC, Inc., doing business as OCLC, See also: is an American nonprofit cooperative organization "that provides shared technology services, original research, and community programs for its membership and the library community at large". It was ...

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Though ships of the class were designed with the hull of a brig, their defining feature of a ship-rig changed their classification to that of a ship-sloop rather than that of a brig-sloop.

Service history

In December 1796 the Royal navy placed orders for four new sloops. The

Navy Board The Navy Board (formerly known as the Council of the Marine or Council of the Marine Causes) was the commission responsible for the day-to-day civil administration of the Royal Navy between 1546 and 1832. The board was headquartered within the ...

considered two differing schools of design, one led by

Sir William Rule ''Sir'' is a formal honorific address in English for men, derived from Sire in the High Middle Ages. Both are derived from the old French "Sieur" (Lord), brought to England by the French-speaking Normans, and which now exist in French only as ...

and another by

Sir John Henslow Sir John Henslow (9 October 1730 – 22 September 1815) was Surveyor to the Navy (Royal Navy) a post he held jointly or solely from 1784 to 1806. Career He was 7th child of John Henslow a master carpenter in the dockyard at Woolwich

. To compare the qualities of ship-rigged and brig-rigged vessels, a ship of each design was to be completed as a ship-sloop and the other as a brig-sloop. In the end the Henslow designs won out, resulting in the ''Snake'' and ''Cruizer''-class being adopted into Royal Navy service. The ''Snake''-class ships were designed as 18 gun

flush deck Flush deck is a term in naval architecture. It can refer to any deck of a ship which is continuous from stem to stern. History The flush deck design originated with rice ships built in Bengal Subah, Mughal India (modern Bangladesh), resulting i ...

brigs with a three-masted ship rig. Of their 18 guns, 16 were 32-pounder

Carronade A carronade is a short, smoothbore, cast-iron cannon which was used by the Royal Navy. It was first produced by the Carron Company, an ironworks in Falkirk, Scotland, and was used from the mid-18th century to the mid-19th century. Its main func ...

s, granting the ships a large amount of firepower for their size. In terms of crew and hull design, the ''Snake''-class was identical to the more prevalent ''Cruzier-''class. Two ships of the class were launched, HMS ''Snake'' and HMS ''Victor''. Reception to the design was mixed; the mounting of a ship-rig on a brig's hull made the vessels unstable in heavy seas, but also increased the survive-ability of the ship in combat. Both of the original ''Snake''-class ships were removed from service by 1810, and their role was soon filled by the larger and better armed ''Cyrus'' class. In 1827 the Naval Board revived the 1797 design and launched two new ''Snake''-class warships, HMS ''Childers'' and HMS ''Cruizer''.

Ships

* HMS ''Snake'' (1797) * HMS ''Victor'' (1798) * HMS ''Childers'' (1827) * HMS ''Cruizer'' (1828)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cruizer Class Brig-Sloop Sloop classes