During the 18th and 19th centuries, asloop-of-war was awarship of the BritishRoyal Navy with a singlegun deck that carried up to 18 guns. Therating system of the Royal Navy covered all vessels with 20 or more guns; thus, the term encompassed all unrated warships, includinggun-brigs andcutters. In technical terms, even the more specialisedbomb vessels andfire ships were classed by the Royal Navy as sloops-of-war, and in practice these were employed in the role of a sloop-of-war when not carrying out their specialised functions.
InWorld War I andWorld War II, the Royal Navy reused the term "sloop" for specialisedconvoy-defence vessels, including theFlower class of the First World War and the highly successfulBlack Swan class of the Second World War, with anti-aircraft and anti-submarine capabilities. They performed similar duties to thedestroyer escorts of theUnited States Navy, and also performed similar duties to the smallercorvettes of the Royal Navy.
A sloop-of-war was quite different from a civilian or mercantilesloop, which was a general term for a single-masted vessel rigged in a way that would today be called agaff cutter (but usually without the square topsails then carried by cutter-rigged vessels), though some sloops of that type did serve in the 18th century BritishRoyal Navy, particularly on theGreat Lakes of North America.
In the first half of the 18th century, most naval sloops were two-masted vessels, usually carrying aketch or asnow rig. A ketch had main andmizzen masts but no foremast. A snow had a foremast and a main mast immediately abaft which a small subsidiary mast was fastened on which the spanker was set.[1]
The first three-masted, i.e., "ship rigged", sloops appeared during the 1740s, and from the mid-1750s most new sloops were built with a three-masted (ship) rig. The third mast afforded the sloop greater mobility and the ability to back sail.
In the 1770s, the two-masted sloop re-appeared in a new guise as thebrig sloop, the successor to the former snow sloops. Brig sloops had two masts, whileship sloops continued to have three (since abrig is a two-masted, square-rigged vessel, and a ship is a square-rigger with three or more masts, though never more than three in that period).
In the Napoleonic period, Britain built huge numbers of brig sloops of theCruizer class (18 guns) and theCherokee class (10 guns). The brig rig was economical of manpower – important given Britain's chronic shortfall in trained seamen relative to the demands of the wartime fleet. When armed withcarronades (32-pounders in theCruizer class, 18-pounders in theCherokee class), they had the highest ratio of firepower to tonnage of any ships in the Royal Navy, albeit within the short range of the carronade. The carronades also used much less manpower than the long guns normally used to arm frigates. Consequently, theCruizer class were often used as cheaper and more economical substitutes forfrigates, in situations where the frigates' high cruising endurance was not essential. A carronade-armed brig, however, would be at the mercy of a frigate armed with long guns, so long as the frigate maneuvered to exploit its superiority of range. The other limitation of brig sloops as opposed to post ships and frigates was their relatively restricted stowage for water and provisions, which made them less suitable for long-range cruising. However, their shallower draught made them excellent raiders against coastal shipping and shore installations.
The Royal Navy also made extensive use of theBermuda sloop, both as acruiser against Frenchprivateers, slavers, and smugglers, and also as its standardadvice vessels, carrying communications, vital persons and materials, and performingreconnaissance duties for the fleets.
Bermuda sloops were found with gaff rig, mixtures of gaff and square rig, or aBermuda rig. They were built with up to three masts. The single masted ships had huge sails and harnessed tremendous wind energy, which made them demanding to sail and required large, experienced crews. The Royal Navy favoured multi-masted versions, as it was perennially short of sailors at the end of the 18th century, and its personnel received insufficient training (particularly in the Western Atlantic, priority being given to the continuing wars with France for control of Europe). The longer decks of the multi-masted vessels also had the advantage of allowing more guns to be carried.
Originally a sloop-of-war was smaller than a sailingfrigate and was (by virtue of having too few guns) outside therating system. In general, a sloop-of-war would be under the command of amaster and commander rather than apost captain, although in day-to-day use at sea the commanding officer of any naval vessels would be addressed as "captain".
A ship sloop was generally the equivalent of the smallercorvette of the French Navy (although the French term also covered ships up to 24 guns, which were classed aspost ships within the sixth rate of the British Navy). The namecorvette was subsequently also applied to British vessels, but not until the 1830s.
American usage, while similar to British terminology into the beginning of the 19th century, gradually diverged. By about 1825 theUnited States Navy used "sloop-of-war" to designate a flush-deck ship-rigged warship with all armament on the gun deck; these could be rated as high as 26 guns and thus overlapped "third-class frigates," the equivalent of British post-ships. The Americans also occasionally used the French termcorvette.[2]
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In theRoyal Navy, the sloop evolved into anunrated vessel with a single gun deck and three masts, twosquare rigged and the aft-mostfore-and-aft rigged (corvettes had three masts, all of which were square-rigged). Steam sloops had a transverse division of their lateralcoal bunkers[3] in order that the lower division could be emptied first, to maintain a level of protection afforded by the coal in the upper bunker division along the waterline.
During the War of 1812 sloops of war in the service of theUnited States Navy performed well against their Royal Navy equivalents. The American ships had the advantage of being ship-rigged rather than brig-rigged, a distinction that increased their manoeuvrability. They were also larger and better armed.Cruizer-class brig-sloops in particular were vulnerable in one-on-one engagements with American sloops-of-war.[4]
In the second half of the 19th century, successive generations of naval guns became larger and with the advent ofsteam-powered sloops, both paddle and screw, by the 1880s even the most powerful warships had fewer than a dozen large calibre guns, and were therefore technically sloops. Since the rating system was no longer a reliable indicator of a ship's combat power, it was abolished altogether and with it the classifications of sloops, corvettes and frigates. Instead a classification based on the intended role of the ship became common, such ascruiser andbattleship.
During theFirst World War, the sloop rating was revived by theBritishRoyal Navy for small warships not intended for fleet deployments. Examples include theFlower classes of "convoy sloops", those designed forconvoy escort, and theHunt class of "minesweeping sloops", those intended forminesweeping duty.
The Royal Navy continued to build vessels rated as sloops during the interwar years. These sloops were small warships intended for colonial "gunboat diplomacy" deployments, surveying duties, and acting during wartime as convoy escorts. As they were not intended to deploy with the fleet, sloops had a maximum speed of less than 20 knots (37 km/h). A number of such sloops, for example theGrimsby andKingfisher classes, were built in the interwar years. Fleet minesweepers such as theAlgerine class were rated as "minesweeping sloops". The Royal Navy officially dropped the term "sloop" in 1937, although the term remained in widespread and general use.
DuringWorld War II, 37 ships of theBlack Swan class were built for convoy escort duties. However, the warship-standards construction, propulsion and sophisticated armaments of the sloop of that time sharedbottlenecks with destroyers and did not lend themselves to mass production on commercial shipyards, thus the sloop was supplanted by thecorvette, and later thefrigate, as the primary escort vessel of the Royal Navy. Built to mercantile standards and with (initially) simple armaments, these vessels, notably theFlower andRiver classes, were produced in large numbers for theBattle of the Atlantic. In 1948 the Royal Navy reclassified its remaining sloops and corvettes as frigates, even though the term sloop had been officially defunct for nine years.
The Royal Navy has proposed a concept, known as the "Future Black Swan-class Sloop-of-war",[5] as an alternative to the Global Corvette of theGlobal Combat Ship programme.
