..Unlocking the bloody history of the ship made famous by Turner, the Fighting Temeraire

Daily Mail ^ | January 22, 2010 | Sam Willis

[C19fan]

Struggling to breathe in mouthfuls of air rank with choking gunsmoke, hundreds of men and boys crouched low on the gun decks of His Majesty's Ship Temeraire. In that cramped space, where shouted orders competed with the screams of the injured, blood ran freely through a hull hewn from English oaks. Already the sails high above were riddled with chain shot from the French warships, but it was there, on the crowded gundecks that a brutal slaughter was unfolding. In the hellish tempest of the Battle of Trafalgar, in an act of almost suicidal valour, the Temeraire's captain chose to draw fire away from the Victory, in which Nelson lay dying.

[tlb]

>>>It would be interesting to see what the author thought of U.S. ships of that day. Our frigates were heavily built compared to the British competition; at least that’s what I’ve always read.

As an undergrad one afternoon I killed some time browsing through microfiche copies of the London Times newspaper in the War of 1812 timeframe, as far back as the files went. Amusingly the attitude of the news was about the same as with modern newspapers.

One item that stuck with me was an editorial blasting the government and the Admiralty. The writer was demanding an investigation about the scandal of the inferiority of British frigates vs American frigates as shown in various lost sea duels. The underlying message was the Americans were being unfair to build larger, better armed, and faster frigates such as the “Constitution”, and the government should DO SOMETHING.

Supposedly a few years earlier when at Gibraltar he observed the American squadron headed toward Tripoli, Nelson too remarked on their apparent technical superiority and predicted they would be trouble for the Royal Navy.

This however only refers to the frigates. Early Americans big experiment with a full sized Ship of the Line was a failure. She spent decades tied up as a warehouse, training school, and such before being burned with the other ships that couldn’t be moved before capture by the seceding Virginians.

[C19fan]

The Movie Master and Commander uses the Consitution as the basis of the French frigate. There is some dialogue of Captain Jack being very impressed with the design, one of his crew had a relative who helped build it. I never read the books but from my understanding the “bad guys” were actually an American commerce raider. It quite caused a stir in England both with the papers as you mentioned and Parliament when the US frigates were having the better of it vs their British counterparts.

[Yollopoliuhqui]

American made frigates, such as the Constitution, were superior to all men of war of the era as they used huge, bent diagonal planks running from deck to keel lengthwise inside the hull to prevent hogging or sagging (the stem and stern being less buoyant than the main hull) and adding many years of service. The British would also reuse frame members from old ships as their stocks of natural bent oak were used up, setting wood containing rot spores next to good. In the year or so it took to set the keel and launch the hull, out in the rain where fresh water got into all the joints, the ship would already be rotten on launching.

[hellbender]

I read some book about the early U.S. Navy a few years ago. The U.S. frigates (at least some of them) used live oak timbers, which are very hard and heavy. I think the planking was unusually heavy, and the guns were heavier than those of British frigates, IIRC. They definitely outclassed most British frigates. The book described the political fighting behind the Navy. The Federalists, being more involved with shipping and trade, wanted a blue water fleet, while the Jeffersonians thought they could get by with nothing but coastal gunboats. When the fight with the Barbary Pirates and later the War of 1812 came along, it was fortunate that Jeff. and Madison had the ships the Federalists had previously demanded be built.

[LonePalm]

From "Grog" in Wikipedia.

Following Britain's conquest of Jamaica in 1655, a half pint or "2 gills" of rum gradually replaced beer and brandy as the drink of choice. Given to the sailor straight, this caused additional problems, as some sailors would save up the rum rations for several days, then drink them all at once. Due to the subsequent illness and disciplinary problems, the rum was mixed with water. This both diluted its effects, and delayed its spoilage. A half pint (current American measurement; the larger British "Imperial" pint was not introduced until 1824), of rum mixed with one quart of water and issued in two servings, before noon and after the end of the working day, became part of the official regulations of the Royal Navy in 1756 and lasted for more than two centuries. This gives a ratio of 2:1.

Citrus juice (usually lime or lemon juice) was added to the recipe to cut down on the water's foulness. Although they did not know the reason at the time, Admiral Edward Vernon's sailors were healthier than the rest of the navy, due to the daily doses of vitamin C that prevented disease (mainly scurvy).[1] This custom, in time, got the British the nickname limeys for the limes they consumed.

The name "grog" probably came from the nickname of Admiral Vernon, who was known as "Old Grog" because he wore a grogram cloak. American Dialect Society member Stephen Goranson has shown that the term was in use by 1749, when Vernon was still alive.[2]

Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)

[hellbender]

That sounds like a fairly stiff dose of alcohol by today’s health standards. I was reading that it is recommended that consumption of alcohol be limited to about 1 oz./day of pure alcohol, which is about 2 “servings” worth. If the sailors got half a pint, or 8 oz, of rum, and the rum was about 80 proof, I calculate that they were getting about 3 oz. of alcohol per day.