The ''Cyrus''-class
sixth rate
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 an ...
s of the
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy (RN) is the naval warfare force of the United Kingdom. It is a component of His Majesty's Naval Service, and its officers hold their commissions from the King of the United Kingdom, King. Although warships were used by Kingdom ...
were a series of sixteen-flush decked
sloops of war built to an 1812 design by Sir William Rule, the
Surveyor of the Navy
The Surveyor of the Navy, originally known as Surveyor and Rigger of the Navy, held overall responsibility for the design of British warships from 1745. He was a principal commissioner and member of the Navy Board from the inauguration of tha ...
. The first nine ships of the class were launched in 1813 and the remaining seven in 1814. The vessels of the class served at the end of the
Napoleonic War
{{Infobox military conflict
, conflict = Napoleonic Wars
, partof = the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars
, image = Napoleonic Wars (revision).jpg
, caption = Left to right, top to bottom:Battl ...
. They were built on the lines of , which was based in turn on the French ship .
The ''Cyrus'' class was intended to be the counter to the new
''Frolic''-class ship-rigged sloops that were under construction for the
United States Navy
The United States Navy (USN) is the naval warfare, maritime military branch, service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is the world's most powerful navy with the largest Displacement (ship), displacement, at 4.5 millio ...
. No encounter took place between any vessel of the ''Frolic'' class and one of the ''Cyrus'' class, but
HMS ''Levant'' was captured by the American frigate .
[Gardiner, p. 87]
With the re-organisation of the rating system which took place in the Royal Navy effective from 1 January 1817, the ''Cyrus''-class flush-decked ships were re-classified as 20-gun sloops.
Ships in class
Notes
References
*
* Rif Winfield, ''British Warships in the Age of Sail, 1793-1817'', Chatham Publishing, London 2005.
{{Cyrus class post ship
Ship classes