Rating System of The Royal Navy - Other Classifications

Other Classifications

Rating was not the only system of classification used. Throughout the Age of Sail the definition of the term "ship" required it to be a vessel being square-rigged on three masts. Sailing vessels with only two masts or a single mast were technically not 'ships', and in the sailing era would not have been described as such. Vessels with fewer than three masts were unrated sloops, generally two-masted vessels rigged as snows or ketches (in the first half of the 18th century), or brigs in succeeding eras. However some sloops were three-masted or ship-rigged, and these were known as ship sloops.

Vessels were also sometimes classified according to the substantive rank of her commanding officer. For instance, when the commanding officer of a gun-brig or even a cutter was a lieutenant with the status of master-and-commander, the custom was to recategorise the vessel as a sloop. For instance, when Pitt Burnaby Greene, the commanding officer of the Bonne Citoyenne in 1811, received his promotion to post-captain, the Navy reclassed the sloop as a post ship.