Agamemnon

Posted by F.F. on Sunday 22nd of January 2023 13:41

To Kurt Loewe:

Sorry, that's the first time I read that pqge. I hope you already found the answer to the question, which is: when a ship has more than one gun-deck, her gun-deck lenght is always that of the lower deck.

The Agamemnon was a very good sailer. Captain (and vice-admiral to-be) Horatio Nelson said she sailed better than any other ship in the fleet she was a part of in 1793-1796 (British fleet in Mediterranean Sea), and was «the finest ship [he] ever sailed in».

The Agamenon belonged to the Ardent-class, built on the lines of a French line-of-battle ship, le Fougueux, taken in 1747 (in a self-sacrifying struggle to protect a merchant fleet), the second of a class of three built in Brest (le Lys, launched in 1746; le Fougueux and le Dragon, both launched in 1747), designed by Jacques-Luc Coulomb, who later made an even better 64-gun ship, le Bizarre (1751-1782, wrecked in the Indian Ocean). Jacques-Luc Coulomb was the best of the excellent naval engineers in the time of Louis XV, yet his ships were to be outclassed by those of Jacques-Noël Sané (built under Louis XVI, the Revolution, Napoléon, and in fact until the end of the sail age).

If the Agamemnon was the finest ship in the fleet in which Nelson stood out in 1793-1796, the finest ships he ever saw were, he said, some of the French ones he saw in Toulon in 1793 (some of the ships there had been designed by Sané, for exemple the 118/120-gun ship of the line le Commerce-de-Marseille).

With the Agamemnon, Nelson succeeded to take a much larger ship in 1795: le Ça-Ira (name given from a revolutionary song), formerly la Couronne («the Crown»), which had been dismasted and couldn't escape. Such a ship was as heavily gunned and as large (or larger) than any British three-decker. Nelson said he had never seen such a two-decker, looking to him large enough to receive the Agamemnon in her hold.

Jacques-Luc Coulomb's Lys-class line-of-battle ship had a displacement of some 2100ｔ (SI), a «port» (weight of everyone and everything on board, except the hull itself) of some 1100 «tonneaux de poids» (c. 1000-1100ｔ or long tons), and a burthen of some 1400 tons. A French 80-gun ship of the line ranged from 2140 to some 2400 tons burthen, and maybe from 3400 to some 4000ｔ in displacement.

Posted by Kurt Loewe on Tuesday 17th of January 2017 10:58

Hello,

I have a question about the decks. I know a ships length is measured by her gun deck. Which deck is that in the case of 2 or 3 decks ( upper, lower, middle)?

thanks,
Kurt

Posted by Niek van Diepen on Tuesday 8th of September 2015 09:44

My 2014 reprint of the second (revised) edition of BWAS-1793 gives as armament LD 26x24pdr, UD 26x18pdr, QD 10x9pdr, Fc 2x9pdr (Broadside Weight 600 Lb), augmented by 2x24pdr carronades on the Fc and 6x18pdr carronades on the Roundhouse in the 1794 establishment (so probably installed at the refit in 1796) for an extra 78 Lb per broadside. So the armament with 32pdr carronades or the reference seems incorrect.

Posted by Carol Woolnough on Saturday 15th of August 2015 14:07

Any info on Midshipman Joseph Chappell Woolnough please?

Posted by Brian on Saturday 24th of May 2014 21:55

Agamememnon, Benjamin Caldwell Esq. Commander, at sea, the 23rd day of December 1781.- Ship Marchais, M. Dugay master, 350 tons bound from Bourdeaux to Martinico, laden with 15 large cables from 16 to 24 inches, cordage, wine, 300 barrels of gun powder, flour, provisions, sundry kinds of linen.