It's back from the holiday so back to the workbench to finish off three 1/2400th Third Rates for the Spanish Fleet. These are the 80 gun San Rafael with the 75 gun Algerciras and Bahama. I have another four of these to assemble, hopefully by the end of the week, after which I'm going to wrap up the summer production line with a handful of Royal Navy second rates.
Like the Royal Navy, the Spanish built their two-decker ships of the line to be able to defend a global empire. Some had VERY long lives. But it seems that one price the Spanish paid for long-voyage survivability was a lighter armament. Until around 1805, Spanish 74s (and indeed 64s and 54s) often carried smaller guns on one or both main gun decks than their British (or indeed French) equivalents. During the 18th century, it was increasingly the case that British 74s mounted 28--32-pounders on their lower gundecks and almost always 28 (rarely 30)--18-pounders on their upper main gundecks (a tiny handful of RN ships had 24-pounders). The French 74s mounted 28--36-pounders on their lower decks by the second half of the C18th, and generally 30--18-pounders on the upper decks. Spanish 74s seem only to have had 28--24pdrs on the lower main gundeck and 30--18pdrs on he upper one. (The Spanish pound wasn't very different in weight from the ours, but the French pound was materially heavier, so a French 36-pdr fired a ball weighing ~39 pounds, and the French 18-pdr shot weighed ~19 lb.s.) Judging by what I've seen in Spanish documents published to mark the bicentenary of Trafalgar ("La campana de Trafalgar 1804-1805: corpus documental", published in 2004), the Spanish made a serious attempt to up-gun many of their ships of the line in or shortly before 1805, including mounting heavier guns on some 74s, and adding their version of carronades ("obuses") on both three-and two-decker ships of the line. Whether particular gun changes reflected the perceived robustness of specific ships, the availability of particular gun calibres at the various arsenals, or the enthusiasm of particular commanding officers, I don't know.
ReplyDeleteSeveral of the large two-decker, or three-decker, Spanish ships that did not already mount 36-pdrs on their lowest gundecks did so from the 1790s. A couple of Spanish two-deckers mounted 24-pdrs on both main gundecks.