Pallas class frigate

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Class overview
Name: Pallas
Operators: RN Ensign Royal Navy
Preceded by: Perseverance class
Succeeded by: Artois class
Completed: Three
Lost: Two
General characteristics
Type: frigate
Displacement: 776 77/94 tons (as designed)
Length: 135 ft (41 m)
Beam: 36 ft (11 m)
Propulsion: Sail
Capacity: Hold depth: 12 feet 6in (3.81 m)
Complement: 257 (altered in 1796 to 254)
Armament:
  • Upper Deck:
    • Twenty-six 18-pounder guns
  • Quarter Deck:
    • four 6-pounder guns
    • four 32-pounder carronades
  • Forecastle:
    • two 6-pounder guns
    • two 32-pounder carronades

The Pallas class sailing frigates were a series of three ships built to a 1791 design by John Henslow, which served in the Royal Navy during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.

The trio were all dockyard-built in order to utilise spare shipbuilding capacity. The orders were originally assigned in December 1790 to the Royal Dockyards at Plymouth and Portsmouth, but in February 1791 the orders were transferred to Chatham and Woolwich Dockyards respectively.

They were the first 32-gun Royal Navy frigates designed to be armed with the eighteen-pounder cannon on their upper deck, the main gun deck of a frigate. Besides their primary battery of twenty-six 18-pounders, they also carried four 6-pounders together with four 32-pounder carronades on the quarter deck, and another two 6-pounders together with two 32-pounder carronades on the forecastle.

[edit] Ships in class

[edit] References

Robert Gardiner, The Heavy Frigate, Conway Maritime Press, London 1994.

Rif Winfield, British Warships in the Age of Sail, 1793 to 1817, Chatham Publishing, London 2005.