Talk:Sloop-of-war

"Flower class" sloops?

The page says, "Especially famous were British mass-produced sloops of Flower-class of the first world war.", but the Flower class we've got is the Flower class corvette of World War II. The external link (/naval_sloops_.htm) and the List of corvette and sloop classes of the Royal Navy both suggest that the WWI sloops with flower names were not all lumped together but were classified as Acacia class, etc.

—wwoods 04:43, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

USS Constellation

The USS Constellation is not a Sloop-of-War. It is a Frigate. This picture should be removed from this page. Sir Knight Michael (talk) 20:40, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Are you thinking of the original 1797 Constellation, which was indeed a frigate? The photograph is of the 1854 USS Constellation. Salmanazar (talk) 16:34, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

HMS Ontario

The HMS Ontario is a 22 gun brig sloop http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Ontario_(1780). If the rating system covered anything above 20 guns then how is it still considered a sloop? I see a brig sloop section in this article but it doesn't explain how a ship like the Ontario isn't included in the ratings. Nihilbilly (talk) 20:24, 14 December 2008 (UTC)Nihilbilly

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A brig has always historically been larger than a sloop, and the rating system given at Rating system of the Royal Navy is, to the best of my knowledge, incorrect. I don't see any references in that article. They give a gun-brig at 6 to 14 guns, a sloop-of-war at 16 to 18 and then 6th rate 20 to 28. But in reality the rating system I am familiar with is this:

• gun-sloop: 12 guns
• gun-brig: 16 guns
• 6th rate (frigate): 28
• 5th rate (frigate): 44

then 50 (4th), 74 (3rd), 90 (2nd) and 100 (1st). Thus you see the wiki article on ratings is OFF base. 74-gun (3rd) is a famous rating, and usually talked about in that number specifically. The British called the U.S. first six frigates as "74's in disguise".

Now, as far as the HMS Ontario (1780), I am not familiar with that ship. But looking at the article my guess is that this may have been sloop-rigged. Now, how in the world someone lined up 11 guns on each side in a sloop is beyond me, especially of 226 tons burden. No wonder it sank in a storm. I notice the infobox calls it a 6th rate ship, and so it cannot be both a 6th rate and a sloop of war. Thus I suspect it was merely sloop-rigged and over-gunned. Grayghost01 (talk) 21:53, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

What the Royal Navy considered a frigate grew over the seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

This article is incorrect in stating that ship-sloops were never Post-Captain commands. The largest ship-sloops were commanded by full Post-Captains. The distinguishing feature between the ship sloops and the smaller Royal Navy frigates is that the frigate will have a quarter-deck at the stern, and a forecastle, whereas the ship-sloops were flush-decked. Geo Swan (talk) 02:03, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Actually, the Ontario was never classed by the Royal Navy as a sloop. She was not rigged as a brig, but as a snow (please ask if you don't understand the difference), and all the official records simply describe her as a snow, not as a sloop and certainly not as a brig-sloop!

The article is correct in mentioning that ship-sloops (and other sloops) were not Post-Captains commands. The definition of the naval sloop was that it was NOT commanded by a Post-Captain. I'm afraid you are misinformed, Geo Swan. You are also incorrect in your other assertion that ship-sloops were flush-decked; the majority of ship-sloops were built with a quarter-deck and forecastle, the most numerous designs in the Royal Navy during the 1793-1815 period being the Cormorant class (31 vessels built to this design) and the Merlin class (16 vessels built to this design). Most brig-sloops, on the other hand, were flush-decked. Rif Winfield (talk) 16:23, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

File:18 gun sloop.JPG Nominated for Deletion

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Too British?

This article seems to focus entirely on usage by the British navy. Since I arrived here from an article on US navy sloops-of-war, I am at a complete loss of how to understand the various ships described therein. The first ship there is a 28 gun ship while this article says that sloops have less than 20 guns. I think this article should simplify the first section along the lines of "A sloop of war is a warship that is smaller than a Frigate. In the Royal Navy rating system they were ships with less than 20 guns." Alternatively, information about how the US navy used the term should be added to the article I got here from. Rockphed (talk) 15:24, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

To make my confusion even greater, this article seems to be fighting with corvette over the position for "ships just smaller than a frigate.Rockphed (talk) 04:03, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

notice of possible merger of "screw sloop"

There exists stub article screw sloop with a fair number, 198, of inbound links. It should perhaps be merged to Steam frigate or to sloop-of-war (perhaps specifically to Sloop-of-war#Decline, which gives a little context perhaps worth consulting before jumping along its link to Steam frigate). Please comment at informal merger proposal discussion, at Talk:Screw sloop#Merge (revived in 2020). --Doncram (talk) 22:10, 3 November 2020 (UTC)