>>Yeah, but it's better than what has happened to the term "Frigate"...
>>
>>(For those of you who don't understand, the USS Constitution was
>>classified as a Frigate when she was built, and the closest modern
>>equivalent would, IIRC, be a Battlecruiser...)
>
>More accurate than you might know, actually.
>
>In the British Navy, 'sloops' and 'frigates' roughly corresponded to
>light and heavy cruisers, where ships of the line were the battleships
>of the age. The American-constructed frigates, however, carried
>substantially more guns that a British frigate of similar tonnage,
>giving the American ship a decided throw-weight advantage.
>
The British actuially built some similarly sized frigates (the HMS Unicorn is still anchored in Dundee - fascinating ship) but concentrated on sixth rater frigates because they were handier, while any ship-of-the-line (battleship) could reduce the heaviest American frigate to kindling.

However, the main tasks for frigates and sloops were recon, convoy escorts and commerce raiding. When the term frigate (also sloop and corvette) were revived in WWII, they were intended as anti-submarine platforms for convoys crossing the atlantic (the old convoy escort role) while commerce raiding becanme primarily a submarine task and recon was handed over to aircraft. So even if the scale has changed, the modern frigate is still filling it's traditional role.

The heavier frigates where the first step in the trend towards smaller ships of the line, with fewer but bigger guns. But they were still frigates because they were filling the same role.

And frigates were not faster than larger ships - because they had smaller sails they were usually somewhat slower. However, they could sail closer to the wind, handle shallower water and were generally more manouverable.

Okay, rant over.

drakensisthered

So I simply said one of the great trite truths: "There is generally more than one side to a story." - Corwin, Roger Zelazny's 'Courts of Chaos'