In the rating system of the Royal Navy used to categorise sailing warships, a sixth-rate was the designation for small warships mounting between 20 and 28 carriage-mounted guns on a single deck, sometimes with smaller guns on the upper works and sometimes without. It thus encompassed ships with up to 30 guns in all. In the first half of the 18th century the main battery guns were 6-pounders, but by mid-century these were supplanted by 9-pounders. 28-gun sixth rates were classed as

frigate A frigate () is a type of warship. In different eras, the roles and capabilities of ships classified as frigates have varied somewhat. The name frigate in the 17th to early 18th centuries was given to any full-rigged ship built for speed an ...

s, those smaller as ' post ships', indicating that they were still commanded by a full ('post') captain, as opposed to sloops of 18 guns and less under commanders.

Rating

Sixth-rate ships typically had a crew of about 150–240 men, and measured between 450 and 550 tons. A 28-gun ship would have about 19 officers; commissioned officers would include the

captain Captain is a title, an appellative for the commanding officer of a military unit; the supreme leader of a navy ship, merchant ship, aeroplane, spacecraft, or other vessel; or the commander of a port, fire or police department, election precinct, e ...

, and two

lieutenant A lieutenant ( , ; abbreviated Lt., Lt, LT, Lieut and similar) is a commissioned officer rank in the armed forces of many nations. The meaning of lieutenant differs in different militaries (see comparative military ranks), but it is often ...

warrant officer Warrant officer (WO) is a rank or category of ranks in the armed forces of many countries. Depending on the country, service, or historical context, warrant officers are sometimes classified as the most junior of the commissioned ranks, the mo ...

s would include the master, ship's surgeon, and purser. The other quarterdeck officers were the

chaplain A chaplain is, traditionally, a cleric (such as a minister, priest, pastor, rabbi, purohit, or imam), or a lay representative of a religious tradition, attached to a secular institution (such as a hospital, prison, military unit, intelligence ...

and a

Royal Marines The Corps of Royal Marines (RM), also known as the Royal Marines Commandos, are the UK's special operations capable commando force, amphibious warfare, amphibious light infantry and also one of the :Fighting Arms of the Royal Navy, five fighti ...

lieutenant. The ship also carried the standing warrant officers, the gunner, the

bosun A boatswain ( , ), bo's'n, bos'n, or bosun, also known as a deck boss, or a qualified member of the deck department, is the most senior rate of the deck department and is responsible for the components of a ship's hull. The boatswain supervise ...

and the

carpenter Carpentry is a skilled trade and a craft in which the primary work performed is the cutting, shaping and installation of building materials during the construction of buildings, ships, timber bridges, concrete formwork, etc. Carpenters t ...

, and two master's mates, four midshipmen, an assistant surgeon, and a captain's clerk. The rest of the men were the crew, or the 'lower deck'. They slept in hammocks and ate their simple meals at tables, sitting on wooden benches. A sixth rate carried about 23 marines, while in a strong crew the bulk of the rest were experienced seamen rated 'able' or 'ordinary'. In a weaker crew there would be a large proportion of 'landsmen', adults who were unused to the sea. The larger sixth rates were those of 28 guns (including four smaller guns mounted on the quarterdeck) and were classed as

s. The smaller sixth rates with between 20 and 24 guns, still all

ship-rigged A full-rigged ship or fully rigged ship is a sailing vessel's sail plan with three or more masts, all of them square-rigged. A full-rigged ship is said to have a ship rig or be ship-rigged. Such vessels also have each mast stepped in three seg ...

and sometimes flush-decked vessels, were generally designated as post ships. These vessels could perhaps be considered comparable to the light cruisers and destroyers of more recent times, respectively. Regardless of armament, sixth-rates were known as " post ships" because, being ''rated'', they were still large enough to have a post-captain in command instead of a

commander Commander (commonly abbreviated as Cmdr.) is a common naval officer rank. Commander is also used as a rank or title in other formal organizations, including several police forces. In several countries this naval rank is termed frigate captain. ...

.McLaughlan 2014, pp. 10–11 During the

Napoleonic Wars The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) were a series of major global conflicts pitting the French Empire and its allies, led by Napoleon I, against a fluctuating array of European states formed into various coalitions. It produced a period of Fre ...

(1803–1815), the now elderly sixth-rate frigates were found to be too small for their expected duties, which were more easily performed by fifth-rate frigates. Most were phased out without replacement, although a few lasted in auxiliary roles until after 1815.

In fiction

The

Aubrey–Maturin series The Aubrey–Maturin series is a sequence of nautical historical novels—20 completed and one unfinished—by English author Patrick O'Brian, set during the Napoleonic Wars and centring on the friendship between Captain Jack Aubrey of the ...

of novels by Patrick O'Brian features the sixth-rate ship HMS ''Surprise'' as the frigate captained by Jack Aubrey. It is based on the actual historical frigate of the same name, formerly the French '' Unité'', which was captured and renamed by the Royal Navy in 1796. The ''Surprise'' was portrayed in the 2003 film '' Master and Commander'' which was adapted from the novels. In the novel '' Mason and Dixon'' by Thomas Pynchon the title characters set sail for Sumatra in 1761 to view the

Venus transit frameless, upright=0.5 A transit of Venus across the Sun takes place when the planet Venus passes directly between the Sun and a superior planet, becoming visible against (and hence obscuring a small portion of) the solar disk. During a transi ...

in the sixth-rate ship HMS ''Seahorse''. The novel ''The Watering Place of Good Peace'' by Geoffrey Jenkins includes a fictional sixth rate ship called HMS ''Plymouth Sound'', which is described as being one of the fastest sailing ships in the

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 Fr ...

. In Hornblower and the Atropos by C.S. Forester, the titular character -

Horatio Hornblower Horatio Hornblower is a fictional officer in the British Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars, the protagonist of a series of novels and stories by C. S. Forester. He later became the subject of films, radio and television programmes, an ...

- commands a sixth-rate ship of 22 guns.

Notes

References

* * Rodger, N.A.M. ''The Command of the Ocean, a Naval History of Britain 1649-1815'', London (2004). * Bennett, G. ''The Battle of Trafalgar'', Barnsley (2004). * Winfield, Rif, ''British Warships in the Age of Sail: 1603-1714'', Barnsley (2009) ; ''British Warships in the Age of Sail: 1714-1792'', Barnsley (2007) ; ''British Warships in the Age of Sail: 1793-1817'', (2nd edition) Barnsley (2008). ; ''British Warships in the Age of Sail: 1817-1863'', Barnsley (2014) .

External links

Sixth-rate ships at the Royal Navy website
{{Rating system of the Royal Navy 6th-rate 6th rate

Rating

In fiction

See also

Notes

References

External links