Talk:HMS St Lawrence (1814)

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[edit] How many guns?

Most online sources say that the St. Lawrence had 112 guns (one said 120), but the list of guns in the article adds up to only 104. In The Command of the Ocean, N.A.M. Roger mentions the St. Lawrence without naming it, writing that "At the end of the war Commodore Sir James Yeo had a three-decker, 102-gun flagship" (p.569). I wonder if it's a difference between how many guns the St. Lawrence was designed to hold, and how many she was actually equipped with. Does anyone have any sources that can clear this up? David 00:25, 1 September 2006 (UTC)]]

I'd like to add my own query to this. (I have tagged the relevant line of the article.) "In way of armaments she carried thirty-two 32pdr long guns and two 68pdr carronades on the upper deck..."'. Surely, this should be thirty-two 32-pounder carronades ? Firstly, no sane designer would put 32-pounder long guns on the upper deck; this enormous topweight would make even something the size of St. Lawrence dangerously top-heavy. (And in any case, only 24-pounder long guns were mounted on the middle deck.) A picture of a model of the ship ([1]) appears, though not very clearly, to show short-barrelled carronades on slides on the upper deck rather than long-barrelled long guns on carriages. Unless anyone has serious objections, I will change the article in the next few days. HLGallon (talk) 23:44, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

According to 'The Sail and Steam Navy List, All the Ships of the Royal Navy 1815-1889' by Lyon and Winfield, they were 32-pounder carronades, not long guns. I'll correct this in the article. As to how many guns in total, both Colledge and Lyon/Winfield quote 112. But it was not uncommon for ships to be redesigned, and minor changes made to the amount and type of guns carried. Benea (talk) 20:46, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Only freshwater ship of the line (?)

So far, no one has found another Royal Navy ship of the line that was landlocked in fresh water for its whole career. One person mentioned HMS Mimi and HMS Toutou, but these were small 20th-century motor launches, not ships of the line (or even the 20th-century equivalent, battleships). David (talk) 20:49, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

I had misread it the first time, I thought it had said warships, which was wrong, ship of the line may not be. But it's still speculation, no matter how likely it seems to be and needs a cite. I've tagged it and I'll take it out later if no one provides one. A number of ships of the line were launched and immediately laid up, only being activated and sent to sea when necessary. All it needs is one to have been burnt or sunk, or to have been declared obsolete, or unfit for service and broken up before being sent to sea and the St Lawrence's claim is gone. And please don't do whole scale reversions like that, you reverted a lot of other changes in doing so. Benea (talk) 20:59, 26 May 2008 (UTC)