1813	British and American Navies	150

odd way of improving her qualities. Scarcely were the twenty 32-pounder carronades and two long nines brought on board, than two of the carronades were sent on shore again, as having no proper ports fitted to receive them. Already the remaining 20 guns were too close together, to render the quarters sufficiently roomy. With these, however, the ships went to sea ; and they were soon found neither to work well, nor to sail well. The utility of their stern-chase ports may be judged when it is stated, that, owing to the narrowness of the ships at the stern, there was no room to work the tiller while the guns were pointed through the ports. Of this discreditable oversight and its evil, consequences, we shall hereafter have to give a practical illustration.

Of the relative stoutness of the spars of the British and American sloops of war, thus pitted against each other by the order of the board of admiralty, some idea may be formed, when it is stated, that the girth, just above the deck, of the mainmast of one of the latter, the Frolic, was 7 feet 8 inches ; whereas the mainmast established upon the former class measured, at the same place, only 5 feet 8 inches. The Cyrus, if not most of the others, was " doubled," so as to increase her beam about 10 inches, and enable the ship to keep the sea in a gale of wind ; and we remember seeing the Medina, at the king's dock-yard in Halifax, Nova-Scotia, having her lower masts fished, to prevent them from snapping in two with the weight of the top-gear above.

While the cutting-down system was pursuing, a mode presented itself of quickly getting ready a few ships, equal in size and force to the large American sloops. The 10 ships of the M class in the Abstracts averaged 534 tons, and mounted 22 carronades, 32-pounders, on the main deck. By haying their quarterdecks and forecastles cut away, these ships would have been much improved in sailing and seaworthiness ; and then, with two long 9 or 12 pounders in lieu of their two foremost carronades, and with their complement increased to 173 men and boys, they would have been far superior vessels to those built under the auspices of the gallant admiral. Even a precedent was not wanted. The Hyæna, of a similar construction to the ships of the above-mentioned class, was, when taken by the French in 1793, cut down to the clamps of her quarterdeck and forecastle, and became a very fast-sailing and successful privateer. On her subsequent recapture by the British in 1797, the Hyæna was allowed to remain as a flush-ship, and was armed precisely in the manner above recommended. * The height between the decks of ships of war must, for obvious reasons, be nearly the same ; consequently the proportion of top-weight increases, as the length, breadth, and below-water depth of the

* See vol. ii., p. 90.

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