The rating system of the Royal Navy and its predecessors were used by the Royal Navy between the beginning of the 17th century and the middle of the 19th century to categorise sailing warships, initia
A 1728 diagram illustrating a first- and a third-rate ship
Battleship 1
Sloop-of-war
Videos
During the 18th and 19th centuries, a sloop-of-war was a warship of the Royal Navy with a single gun deck that carried up to 18 guns. The rating system of the Royal Navy covered all vessels with 20 or
Rating system of the Royal Navy
…sloops, but that nomenclature is quite confusing for unrated vessels, especially when dealing with the finer points of "ship-sloop", "brig-sloop", "sloop-of-war" (which really just meant the same in naval parlance as "sloop") or even "corvette" (the last a French term that the British Navy did not use until the…
c. 1752 model of a 12-gun Royal Navy sloop
1831 painting of a Royal Navy Bermuda sloop entering a port in the West Indies by John Lynn
USS Portsmouth in 1896.
The Grimsby-class HMS Wellington. Launched in 1934, the vessel is now berthed on the Thames