This latter celebrated and favorite class of ship stood next in order
of power above the corvette, with which it might also be said to
have blended; for although in the frigate class there were two, or
at the most three, rates that predominated vastly in numbers over
all the rest, yet the name covered many differing degrees of force.
The distinguishing feature of the frigate was that it carried one
complete row of guns upon a covered deck—upon a deck, that is, which
had another deck over it. On this upper or spar deck there were also
guns—more or fewer—but lighter in weight than those on the covered
deck, usually styled the main deck. The two principal classes of
frigates at the beginning of this century were the thirty-two-gun
and the thirty-eight-gun. That is, they carried nominally sixteen or
nineteen guns on each side; but the enumeration is misleading, except
as a matter of comparison, for guns of some classes were not counted.
Ships generally had a few more cannon than their rate implied. The
United States thirty-two-gun frigate _Essex_, for example, carried at
first twenty-six long twelves on the main deck, with sixteen carronades
and two chase guns on the spar deck. Above these two classes came the
forty-four-gun frigate, a very powerful rate, which was favored by
the United States navy and received a development of strength then
unprecedented.
Being such as here described, the frigate was essentially, though not
exclusively, the appendage of a fleet of line-of-battle ships. Wars are
decided not by commerce destroying nor by raids, however vexatious, but
by fleets and armies, by great organized masses—that is, by crushing,
not by harassment. But ships of the line, to perform their function,
must keep together, both when cruising and when on the field of battle,
in order to put forth their strength in combination. The innumerable
detached services that must be discharged for every great organized
force need for a fleet to be done by vessels of inferior strength,
yet so strong that they cannot be intercepted or driven off lightly
by every whipper-snapper of an armed ship that comes along. Moreover,
a fact not always realized, speed—speed to hasten on a mission, to
overtake a foe, or to escape pursuit—depends upon size, masts that
can carry sail and hold way amid heavy seas. Hence the frigate, not
the lighter sloop, was indicated for the momentous duties upon which
depended the intelligence and the communications of the fleet. Such
leading considerations are needed to be stated and to be kept in mind,
for they affected the warfare of the last decade of the century quite
as really as they did that of the first, and a paper would indeed be
incomplete which confined itself to indicating points of difference
of progress, so-called, and failed to recognize those essential and
permanent conditions which time will never remove. Frigates and sloops
have disappeared in name and form, in motive power and in armament.
Their essential functions remain, and will remain while war lasts.