1745 Establishment - Origins

Origins

When the 1706 Establishment had come into effect, British naval architecture had been set on a path of conservatism that caused stagnation in the advance of shipbuilding in Great Britain. Over the course of the existence of the 1706 and 1719 Establishments, the sizes of ships had remained relatively unchanged: the gundeck length of a 70-gun third rate of 1706 was 150 ft (45.7 m), compared with 151 ft (46.0 m) in 1733. By comparison, the 70-gun French ship Ferme captured by the Royal Navy in 1702 was 156 ft 2 in (47.6 m), and the 70-gun Magnanime of 1744, captured in 1748 was 173 ft 7 in (52.9 m). This was almost as long as the 175 ft (53.3 m) to which British first rates were to be built according to the 1741 proposals.

With the end of Robert Walpole's government in 1742, the Board of Admiralty was re–organised, and the civilian Earl of Winchilsea was appointed First Lord. Under the new administration, there were some half-hearted attempts at reform, with the ordering of the 90-gun Namur to be razeed to 74-guns, as a response to the increasing French and Spanish practice of building 74-gun ships, and an experiment in building larger ships for their class resulted in the construction of Bristol and Rochester.

The Duke of Bedford, again a civilian, was appointed First Lord in December 1744. He relied upon Rear-Admiral George Anson, who had refused promotion to flag rank under the previous First Lord. The fiasco that was the Battle of Toulon highlighted many of the problems in British shipbuilding, with several ships unable to open gunports due to a combination of a lack of stability and insufficient height of the ports above the waterline. It was observed by Commodore Charles Knowles that the British 70-gun ships were 'little superior to ships of 52 guns.' Many of the fleet's problems were blamed on Sir Jacob Acworth, the Surveyor of the Navy since 1715, and an unsuccessful attempt to remove him was mounted by one of the members of the Board of Admiralty, Henry Legge.

For the previous Establishments, the dimensions had been decided upon through consultation with the Surveyor and senior shipwrights; instead in June 1745 the Admiralty took the lead when it decided to deal with the problem of ship sizes, and set up a committee to review proposals made by the Navy Board. The original purpose of the Establishments was to standardise the fleet, but because ships had been built and rebuilt at various times to varying established dimensions, there was little more standardisation than had been present before the 1706 Establishment came into being. The new Establishment of 1745 was intended to correct this situation, and at the same time solve the issues with British ships that had been the cause of complaint by sea officers for several years.

The Admiralty had intended that the 80-gun ships should no longer be built, they being too short and lacking in stability so as not to be able to open their lower ports in anything much above a calm sea. The committee the Admiralty had set up disagreed with their assessment however, and the suggestion to switch to 74-gun ships in lieu of the 80s was rejected. The size of ships was to be limited according to the depth of water available in the country's ports, and so even the 90-gun ships were to remain smaller than some French and Spanish 74s. Despite these setbacks, the Admiralty had achieved much greater increases in the sizes of ships than with the previous establishments. Furthermore, the ship types of pre-1741 were restored (i.e. the 64s returned to being 70s, the 58s to 60s, etc.).

The earlier establishments had merely laid out the principal dimensions for each type of warship from the 100-gun first rates down to the 20-gun sixth rates (although with effect from the 1719 Establishment this was augmented by defining the sizes and thicknesses of wood to be used in the construction), and had left the actual design of each vessel to the Master Shipwright in each Naval Dockyard, with the Surveyor of the Navy responsible only for common designs for those ships built by contract by mercantile shipbuilders. However, under the new 1745 Establishment the responsibility for preparing designs ("draughts") for all ships was given to the Surveyor of the Navy, with the Master Shipwrights now responsible only for constructing ships to those common Surveyor's designs for each type of vessel.

Additionally, the control over the Establishments was passed from the Admiralty to the Privy Council, a move intended to remove the possibility of changes being made in the future. Despite the rejection of their proposal that 74-gun ships should replace 80s in the new establishment, the Admiralty succeeded in having Culloden, which was building as an 80, modified to be completed as a 74, though she was never considered a particularly successful ship, and was the smallest 74-gun ship of the 18th century.