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The ''Cruizer'' class was an 18-gun class of brig-sloops of the Royal Navy. Brig-sloops were the same as ship-sloops except for their rigging. A ship-sloop was rigged with three masts whereas a brig-sloop was rigged as a brig with only a fore mast and a main mast. The ''Cruizer'' class was the most numerous class of warships built by the British during the Napoleonic wars, with 110 vessels built to this design, and the second most numerous class of sailing warship built to a single design for any navy at any time, after the smaller 10-gun s.〔Winfield (2008), pp. 282 & 291.〕 Of the vessels in the class, eight (8%) were lost to the enemy, either destroyed or taken. Another was taken, but retaken. Fourteen (13%) were wrecked while in British service. Lastly, four (4%) foundered while in British service. In all cases of foundering and in many cases of wrecking all the crew was lost. Many of the vessels in the class were sold, some into mercantile service. One at least was wrecked. The fate of the others is generally unknown. ==Design== In December 1796, the Navy Board placed new orders for four flush-decked sloops, to differing designs by the two Surveyors of the Navy — Sir William Rule and Sir John Henslow. In order to compare the qualities of ship-rigged and brig-rigged vessels, one vessel to each design was to be completed as a ship-sloop and the other as a brig-sloop. While the Henslow-designed vessels (the brig-sloop and the ship-sloop ) would see no further sister ships built, the Rule-designed vessels (the brig-sloop ''Cruizer'' and the ship-sloop would each have a single sister ship ordered in the following March, and Rule's ''Cruizer'' design would subsequently see 106 constructed during the Napoleonic War.〔 The hull design was exceeding fine (narrow as compared to length), a noted deadrise amidships, and a sharp sheer, giving away the design that had origins in the smaller cutter-type designs.〔The Naval War of 1812, p.88〕 The order placed in March 1797 for the first sister ship to ''Cruizer'' was subsequently cancelled, but new orders were placed from 1802 up to 1813. A final order in 1815 (HMS ''Samarang'') was cancelled in 1820.〔 The ''Cruizer''-class brig-sloops proved to be fast sailers and seaworthy, and the 32-pounder carronade armament gave them enormous short-range firepower, exceeding the nominal broadside of a standard 36-gun 18-pounder frigate. To a Royal Navy increasingly desperate for manpower, the great attraction of the design was that — thanks to the two-masted rig and the use of carronades with their small gun crews — this firepower could be delivered by a crew only a third the size of a frigate's. The Dutch built three 18 gun-brigs — ''Zwaluw'', ''Mercuur'' and ''Kemphaan'' — to a similar design; in one case apparently a copy, though without the square tuck stern. The Russian brig ''Olymp'' was also built to the same lines. The naval historian C.S. Forester commented in relation to the smaller gun-brigs (brig-rigged vessels of under 200 tons) that The type was a necessary one but represented the inevitable unsatisfactory compromise when a vessel has to be designed to fight, to be seaworthy and to have a long endurance, all on a minimum displacement and at minimum expense. Few men in the Royal Navy had a good word to say for the gun-brigs, which rolled terribly and were greatly over-crowded, but they had to be employed.〔Forester, p.79〕 It should be noted that later in the same book he was more complementary as regards the larger brigs such as the ''Cruizer'' class . Perhaps the most salient aspect of his statement is that the ''Cruizer'' class and its smaller sister class, the ''Cherokee'' class, highlight the huge expansion of the Royal Navy. Whatever else one may say of the class, the ''Cruizer''-class brig-sloops were both fast and provided serious firepower for minimal crewing, characteristics that appealed to a Navy suffering serious and ever increasing staffing shortages.〔 The class proved to be ideal for many of the shallow water commitments in the Baltic and Ionian Seas, as well as around Danish waters. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Cruizer-class brig-sloop」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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