Steam frigate

Later on the invention of screw propulsion enabled construction of screw-powered versions of the traditional frigates, corvettes, sloops and gunboats.

The first small vessel that can be considered a steam warship was the Demologos, which was launched in 1815 for the United States Navy.

[1] From the early 1820s, the British Navy began building a number of small steam warships including the armed tugs HMS Comet and HMS Monkey, and by the 1830s the navies of America, Russia and France were experimenting with steam-powered warships.

[2] Hellenic sloop-of-war Kartería (Καρτερία; Greek for "Perseverance") was the first steam-powered warship to be used in combat operations in history.

A confusing circumstance arose when in the early nineteenth century the forecastle and quarterdecks of most big ships were joined to become a complete flush deck above.

The placement of the machinery and wheels in the middle of the ship conflicted with having the main mast there, and so the sail plan of paddle frigates was less than ideal.

Another characteristic that slowed down these vessels was that the paddle wheels would rotate in the water freely when the ship was sailing.

[5] Therefore the armament of steam vessels had to follow a different concept: Because of their ability to move against the wind they could be assumed to be able to choose their distance to sail-only ships.

Under these circumstances the very heavy guns that were deemed to fire too slowly for close-quarters combat did become useful because they had a high effective range.

The only means to counter it was to develop heavier solid shot cannon that had an even higher effective range.

Combined with being immune to contrary winds, this made them ideal for large scale troop transport.

The Cyclops would be taken as a model to build six more of these steam frigates (Vulture, Firebrand, Gladiator, Sampson, Dragon and Centaur).

[9] The rating of Cyclops as a 'steam frigate' was surprising: she was rigged as a brig (with only two masts), and carried all her guns on the upper deck[7] Other aspects did explain this classification.

In 1842 she was lengthened by 63 feet, and was fitted with the largest naval steam engines yet seen, generating nearly 700 horsepower.

She had a 330 men crew, and was armed with 10 68-pounders on the main deck, and on the forecastle and quarterdeck: two 85 cwt pivot guns, 10 42-pounders carronades and 4 howitzers.

Seven other steamers were 'less than first class'[13] The Russian Tsarist Navy also had a sizable fleet of paddle steam frigates.

The subsequent campaign caused a huge demand for frequent and reliable communication with Algeria, and so about two dozen ships were built to the model of Sphinx.

[14] Continuing the Sphinx type meant that France was not developing something that resembled a steam frigate.

Later on, the French state wanted to establish packet boat lines to New York, the West Indies and Brazil.

The first functional propeller, a shortened version of the Archimedes' screw, was invented independently by Francis Pettit Smith and John Ericsson in 1835.

The technology of propeller or 'screw' propulsion was proven by 1845 after the Royal Navy evaluated the performance of Smith's seagoing steamship SS Archimedes in comparison with their own fleet of paddle steamers.

Apart from spending weight on machinery and coal, the screw ship retained the full broadside battery lay-out.

In 1848 the sail frigate HMS Thetis was estimated to cost 64 GBP daily to operate.

By the late 1840s many navies were building screw-driven warships or converting sailing ships to include screw propulsion.

HMS Euryalus of 1853 was 65 m long, displaced 3,125 t, had twenty-eight 8 inch 65 cwt shell guns and twenty-two 32-pounders.

The improved screw propeller invented by Brunel also enabled the Victorian Royal Navy to extend the service life of obsolete sail-powered ships of the line.

The Impératrice Eugénie class of 5 ships was built according to a design by Henri Dupuy de Lôme.

The additional weight of the armour on these first ironclad warships meant that they could have only one gun deck, and they were technically frigates, even though they were more powerful than existing ships-of-the-line and occupied the same strategic role.

The steam sloop HMS Gannet spent many years as a training ship and is now preserved at Chatham.

A replica of the Japanese frigate Kaiyō Maru was built as a museum ship in 1990 after the original wreck was salvaged for preservation.