1813	The Frigate Classes	143

condition of the French fleet at Toulon was keeping before that port, for the most part as mere lookers-on, 10,000 or 12,000 of the best seamen in the British navy ; three fourths of whom were on board three-deckers, ships that, under existing circumstances, were useless any where but on that station. Allowing, even, that both the Flushing and the Toulon stations required a numerical force of ships outside nearly equal to that within, a dozen or two of large transports, with a double row of painted ports, would keep the enemy in harbour as effectually as the same number of well-appointed 74s. With respect to the Mediterranean fleet, it was particularly to be regretted that, while there was such a dearth of seamen in the home ports and on the North-American station, so many thousands of the very best of seamen, who, under the wise regulations of Sir Edward Pellew, had been daily improving themselves in the neglected art of gunnery, should be denied the power of showing their proficiency where it was so much wanted.

We have already given a very full account, not only of the exploits, but of the force in guns, men, and size, of the American 44-gun frigates ; and we will now, as far as lies in our power, point out the steps that were taken by the British admiralty, to put a stop to their further successes. The Majestic, Goliath, and Saturn, three of the small-class 74s, were cut down, fore-and-aft, to the clamps of the quarterdeck and forecastle. Each ship was allowed to retain her first-deck battery of 28 long 32-pounders, and, in lieu of her 28 long 18-pounders on the second deck, she received an equal number of 42-pounder carronades, besides two long 12-pounders as chase-guns, making 58 guns on two flush decks, with a net complement of 495 men and boys. This, although a reduction in her numerical force of 22 guns (16 on the quarterdeck and forecastle and six on the poop), gave the ship, even if armed with the full establishment of long guns and carronades assigned to her class, a slightly increased weight of metal in broadside. The advantages contemplated from this alteration in the construction were, superiority in sailing, an equal degree of force, and, with the aid of a black hammock-cloth thrown over the waist-barricade, such a disguised appearance, as might induce the large American frigates to come down and engage. The three 64s reduced in the year 1794 * were converted into real frigates ; inasmuch as, excepting the portion of bulwark that lay abaft the gangway-entrance, they were cut down level with the upper deck, and were armed precisely as any frigate of similar dimensions would have been. But these rasé 74s were no more frigates, although frequently so called, than the nine 56 and 54 gun ships purchased into the service in 1795. � The latter, although much smaller and more lightly armed than the rasés, were never considered as any other

* See vol. i., p. 401, note W *.
� See vol. i., p. 403, note R* and S*.

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