"Corvettes?" Topic

The French navy of the era had ships called Corvette's. What class of ship were they in other navies? Such as, were they Brigs or Sloops of War? Was a Corvette smaller than a Frigate?

The "Corvette' in the French Navy was same as Sloop of War in Royal Navy. Three masts, 20 or fewer guns.

This Wiki article should help you: link

This rating schema was fairly common for all the large European navies – French, Spanish, Dutch, Danish, etc.

Jim

I believe that by the time of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars the French Corvette was pretty consistently a flush decked vessel with one open deck of guns…

No raised forecastle or quarterdeck. Similar in size (sometimes) to a typical Royal Navy Sloop of War.

Actually I think they were the opposite in the French Navy – Frigate-built – i.e. with a forecastle and quarterdeck. Generally the French distinguished between these and open deck sloops, as did the British, although British terminology differed a little.

There are always exceptions, but in general:

In the British nomenclature, a "Brig/sloop" was an open deck ship with either a brig or sloop rig, and often the same hull-class might have one or the other. If such a ship was rated, as in "6th rate" AND/OR if it had a forecastle and quarterdeck it was loosely called a "Post Ship" meaning a Captain was posted to the ship, as opposed to a "Commander" (less rank, less pay) of the open deck ship. Corvette was not in general British use at this time, but is a term retrospectively applied to these post ships by later authors writing when the British had a formal corvette designation, sorta like some authors post WWI refer to armored cruisers as heavy cruisers. The French navy had the designation corvette for their equivalent of the British post ship, although the term was often (incorrectly) applied to smaller ships.

Equally confusing, since post ships and corvettes could get into the upper 20's of guns they encroached on the territory of and were often called small frigates. The real determining factor though would be the rank of the commander of the ship – capitaine de frégate vs capitaine de corvette.

"French Warships in the Age of Sail, 1786-1869" by Winfield and Roberts gives good coverage to the various French corvette classes – plenty of hull diagrams, too.

B

The Royal navy had 2 masted Brig-Sloops and 3 masted Ship-Sloops. French Corvettes were similar to the latter and indeed some captured French corvettes were classified as Ship-Sloops in British service. In the early part of the conflict quarterdeck sloops were more common in the RN but flush-deck sloops gradually took over although some quarterdeck sloops still served and new classes were still built in small numbers.