certainly possess many advantages. To mount all their guns in a single tier, their dimensions require to be increased; and this enables them to carry heavier metal than ships of the same nominal force, that mount a part of their guns on a quarterdeck and forecastle.

So that the term post-ship was applied to ships of 24, 22, and 20 guns, and ship-sloop, to ships of 18, 16, 14, and any less number of guns; while the French term corvette comprehended both divisions of classes. The French named their armed brigs simply brigs (bricks, or brigantines, and commonly avisos), surprised, no doubt, that the British should apply the term sloop to any vessel, no matter how rigged or constructed, provided she was commanded by a master and commander. For instance, a 74-gun ship, if reduced in her armament, and a master and commander appointed to her, registers as a sloop; that is, unless fitted for, and expressly classed as a hospital; prison, or store ship. It should be observed that the French, notwithstanding they commonly call their own men-of-war brigs of the largest class, bricks or avisos, do not hesitate to apply the term corvette (although, it has just appeared, originally restricted to ship-rigged vessels, or vessels "portant le même grément qu'une frégate") to British brigs of war of the smallest class. To meet this, we shall designate all French brigs of war, above an acknowledged gun-vessel so rigged, brig-corvettes.

The proper frigate, therefore, is a ship that mounts 24 guns, at the least, on a single deck, besides other guns on a quarterdeck and forecastle. So long as this arrangement of the guns is adhered to, the denomination will, we conceive, apply to a ship of any force; but, when once the waist becomes barricaded and filled with guns, the vessel is no longer a frigate, but a flush two-decked ship. It may here be observed, that the term flush cannot, with propriety, be applied to a frigate, because, according to the above definition, a frigate must have a quarterdeck and forecastle. The term can only be used in reference to such real single-decked vessels as are to be found among the post-ship and ship-sloop classes; and this is the restriction to which we alluded at a former page. *

We, may gather from what has been stated, that the expression, one, two, or three decked ship, is as vague in respect to the real number of battery-decks, as it undoubtedly is in respect to the number of guns mounted on those decks; and that, when the number of decks and of guns is ascertained, no accurate judgment can be formed of the ship's force, until the nature of those guns be also communicated. But, and a remarkable fact it is, let the number and nature of the guns once be known, and owing to the long-established practice of mounting no guns of a

* See p. 19.

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