The Perseverance-class frigate was a 36-gun, later 42-gun, 18-pounder fifth-rate frigate class of twelve ships of the Royal Navy, constructed in two batches. Designed by Surveyor of the Navy Sir Edward Hunt the first iteration, consisting of four ships, was constructed as a rival to the similar Flora-class frigate. Strongly built ships, the Perseverance class provided favourable gunnery characteristics and was highly manoeuvrable, but bought these traits with a loss of speed. The name ship of the class, Perseverance, was ordered in 1779 and participated in the American Revolutionary War, but her three sister ships were constructed too late to take part. The class continued in service after the war, but soon became outdated.
In 1801 the new First Lord of the Admiralty Admiral Lord St Vincent brought back the Perseverance class in an attempt to save money and resources in ship construction by producing older and less elaborate designs than those his predecessor Lord Spencer had built. Five new Perseverance-class frigates were initially ordered in 1801, but one of these was cancelled before construction had begun. A year later two frigates were ordered to be built on contract at Bombay Dockyard, and a final ship of the class was accidentally ordered in 1808. This second iteration of the class retained the earlier gunnery characteristics, but the sailing issues of the old design were not improved on and the ships were very slow when compared to other modern designs.
The ships of the class saw wide-ranging service throughout the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, serving on blockades, in fleets, and on cruises on a large variety of Royal Navy stations. Key actions of the class include Phoenix in the battle of Tellicherry, action of 12 May 1796, and battle of Cape Ortegal, and Iphigenia at the battle of Grand Port. Of the eleven completed ships of the class five were lost in shipwrecks, while Iphigenia was captured by the French at Grand Port but later recaptured. The last extant ship of the class was Salsette, one of the two Bombay ships, which was broken up in 1874 having spent almost forty years as a receiving ship.
Design and construction First iteration Background
In the early years of the American Revolutionary War the British Admiralty noted the success of the French Navy's large frigates of twenty-eight and thirty main guns. These frigates were mostly armed with 18-pounders, a larger calibre than that of the Royal Navy's general use. In response to these French frigates the Admiralty demanded that the Navy Board provide designs for a new series of British frigates that would be able to outperform the new generation of French ships. These new classes were to have 18-pounders instead of the Royal Navy's usual choice of 12-pounders and were to be of a minimum of thirty-two guns overall. Surveyors of the Navy Sir Edward Hunt and Sir John Williams each brought forth a design, Hunt's of thirty-eight guns and Williams' of thirty-six.
These classes would go on to be known as the Minerva and Flora class frigates, respectively. One frigate of each design was ordered by the Admiralty to be built on 6 November 1778. With these initial two classes holding different amounts of guns, other ships of different but equivalent designs were required to further evaluate them. Hunt was employed again to provide an alternative design to the Flora class, of thirty-six guns total.
Design The design Hunt came up with was the Perseverance-class frigate. This was a slightly shortened equivalent of the Minerva class. The class was very similar in design to the Flora class despite the intentions for the two to be evaluated against each other, however the Perseverance design was sharper than Flora. One of the most noticeable differences between the two classes was that the Perseverance class had slightly longer rails on their quarterdecks. Both thirty-six gun ship classes were built quite heavily and were known to be very robust in their construction, most likely because the designers had erred on the side of caution when drawing up the new ships.
As well as this the ships would go on to be thought of very favourably in combat, because even when victualled for long journeys they provided a large amount of freeboard with which to keep guns in use. As well as this, the guns themselves were seven feet apart from each other, providing more operating space than was common. These favourable gunnery characteristics came at a cost to the class's speed, however, but they made up for this by retaining a high level of manoeuvrability and were very weatherly.
Construction and armament The first ship of the class, Perseverance, was ordered on 3 December 1779. In response to positive trials of all three designs by Hunt and Williams, more vessels were ordered later in the Revolutionary War to a variety of civilian dockyards. Three further vessels would be built of the Perseverance class, but in this early stage of war the speed of civilian construction was still slow, with the average length of construction being eighteen months. This meant that only Perseverance herself was launched in time to see any service in the war the class was built for. To avoid the creation of jealous tensions between Hunt and Williams, as was often the case when the surveyors designed similar ships, the later ships of the Perseverance and Flora classes were ordered in a pattern alternating between the two classes. These early classes of 18-pounder frigates were not extensively built after the war because by 1790 the Pallas-class frigate had been adopted as the standard design, but because the majority of the class missed the Revolutionary War they were saved from the strenuous services many ships underwent during that conflict, and thus had longer service lives than might have been expected.
All ships of the class were constructed to the following dimensions: along the gun deck, at the keel, with a beam of and a depth in the hold of . They measured 871 tons burthen and were to have a crew of 260 men. Initially the armament of the class was set at twenty-six 18-pounders on the gundeck, four 6-pounders on the quarterdeck, and two 6-pounders on the forecastle. On 30 September 1779 four 18-pound carronades were added to the quarterdeck and another four were added to the forecastle in response to the new carronade establishment ordered by the Admiralty. Also on the forecastle, fourteen -pounder swivel guns were added.
The carronades added in the 1779 establishment were later found to be widely impracticable in the frigates and the majority of them were removed by the end of the Revolutionary War; by July 1782 Perseverance had only two of her quarterdeck carronades remaining. The final armament change for the class came on 25 April 1780 when all the 6-pounders were replaced with 9-pounders. At the same time as this the complement of men for the class was increased to 270 to reflect the increased size of much of the weaponry being carried on board. The ships would in later years be classified on paper as 42-gun frigates.
Second iteration Background
In the 1790s the First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Spencer, moved the Royal Navy away from a policy of building small, cost-efficient vessels that resulted in a large fleet, and instead championed the building of larger and more expensive ships that could help counter French and Spanish ships that had not been designed under similar constraints. By 1800 the majority of British frigates were of a similar size to those of other nations, but this new fleet had been very expensive to construct. In February 1801 a new administration brought in a new First Lord, Admiral Lord St Vincent. With threats of invasion ongoing and peace with France being uncertain, St Vincent was tasked with continuing to build frigates at the same pace as his predecessor, but with far less extravagance and expense.
St Vincent, an experienced sailor, believed that the navy could exist with average but capable ships, with the gap between the force of a British and French frigate being made up by the superior training of British crews. He was of the opinion that the Perseverance-class frigates were of the perfect size for this strategy, with Inconstant being especially singled out as a model ship, and as such orders were put forth for the class to be revived. The smaller size and consistency in service of the Perseverance class was what gained it favour with St Vincent; it has been noted that other classes, such as the Flora class, were faster, and the choice was no compliment to the sailing qualities of the class. This would become the blueprint for future frigate designs and construction, forcing the Royal Navy back to the use of smaller, cheaper, but still capable frigates. While there was little push back against the order, it has since been suggested by the naval historian Robert Gardiner that the whole revival was a false economy that did not assist St Vincent's finances as he had hoped.
Design
There were some very minor alterations to the original design of 1779, such as a reinforced forecastle, but the design was mostly identical. This included the sailing qualities of the class, which were not improved; they were comparatively poorer than other modern British frigates. This reflected the anachronistic twenty-year-old designs that made the Perseverance class shorter and stubbier than its compatriots. While their high gun ports provided the same benefits as the first iteration's, the ships of the class struggled to reach above eleven or twelve knots and did not catch the wind easily when at sea.
Construction and armament Five vessels were initially ordered to be built in the United Kingdom, starting with the first ship of the revival, Tribune. The first two vessels were built in civilian dockyards as favours to the loyalties of the owners, but all other ships of the class were built in Royal Dockyards, reflecting St Vincent's distrust of most civilian dockyards. In the following year two more ships of the class were ordered, but these were to be built of teak in Bombay Dockyard by contract with the East India Company, and despite requests from the Admiralty for the builders to stay within the designated measurements for the class, these two ships ended up significantly different to the rest of the class, especially in terms of their beam. As such Gardiner argues that these should be considered as only half-sisters to the rest of the Perseverance class. In May 1808 the final ship of the original group of five ordered was completed, and a final frigate was ordered to be built to the same design. The naval historian Rif Winfield suggests that this ship, while completed and launched in 1811, was in fact a mistaken order.
The second iteration of the Perseverance class were constructed, apart from the two Bombay ships, to the following dimensions: along the gun deck, at the keel, with a beam of and a depth in the hold of . They were to measure 869 tons burthen, and their crew complement was set slightly lower than the original iteration of the class; at 260, but by 1815 this had been raised to 264. The first Bombay ship, Salsette, was particularly unique when compared to her sister ships: she measured along the gun deck, at the keel, with a beam of and a depth in the hold of . She weighed 901 tons burthen.