"Guardships - what exactly were they?" Topic

What exactly was the role of a Guardship? Some ships, even as large as 1st Rates, were assigned to this role for part of their careers. It appears that their role was limited to a geographical area or port but I assume that as they are not described as 'Guardhulks' or Floating Batteries that they remained able to put to sea. Presumably it would have been unnecessary to fully equip the vessel with stores if it was not making long sea voyages but did they reduce the crew or reduce the armament? Did they have any role in providing and accommodating crews for guard boats for the harbour or providing sentries for the port?

From what I've read they're tricky to pin down because they didn't have an exact role – or rather the term could be applied to ships fulfilling a number of roles.

As best I can tell active fleet ship through to hulk was more a spectrum than a clear-cut hierarchy. As such 'guardship' could include ships expected to go sea and ships not expected to sail.

A role seems to have been as a ready reserve for local defence. All navies of the era appear to play the bureaucratic numbers vs economy games during peacetime, and many of the ships listed in the fleet would actually have been 'in ordinary': no crew, de-stored, possibly even de-gunned and de-masted. It would take months to get them back to active status so guardships fulfilled an intermediate state as at least partially crewed & stored and able to sail in a few days for local operations.

Another significant consideration until steam came along was prevailing or fickle winds preventing the main fleet from coming to the rescue. I read of one case where a ship waited 4 weeks to get out of Portsmouth! Certainly for the British a French fleet sweeping down on Plymouth & Falmouth whilst much of the fleet were held up at Spithead and Chatham seems to have been a significant concern.

Finally, given the ships were there they'd undoubtedly pick up extra duties as some or all of flagship/headquarters, training ship, receiving ship, stores ship, etc.

OK, so I was sort of in the right area in my thinking – thanks!

Dr Alexander Clarke gives you an explaination here in his, um, idiosyncratic style here:

YouTube link

Ha – interesting style but informative! One point I would make though is that British Napoleonic ships were not entirely uncrewed when In Ordinary – the ships retained a number of key senior rates like the Carpenter etc.