Starting from the lowest level, the capacious hold was required to contain the supplies to provide for nearly a thousand men (over a thousand in the case of the Victoria and Howe) together with their personal belongings, but it also held a deep layer of ballast covering the whole bottom of the ship. The ballast usually comprised pig iron with a shingle covering, its purpose being to bring the ship’s centre of gravity down and maintain its stability The weight of the masts, spars and canvas aloft, and even more the weight of a hundred iron or brass guns and their carriages, required much weight to be carried in the lower part of the ship to compensate. Laid directly onto the ballast were certain bulky stores, notably the water casks and beer barrels, which bedded into the shingle. Shingle could become noisome, and when iron water tanks replaced wooden casks in the early nineteenth century, the use of shingle declined.

Certain categories of stores were kept in separate compartments to avoid contamination, including a bread room and a fish room, but in particular a closely-guarded spirit room. Much is often made of the vast amounts of alcohol to be found on a sailing warship, but it should be remembered that this simply reflected the situation on land – fresh water would rapidly become foul and fetid, whereas the beer and spirits would remain drinkable for much longer.

A model of a section of the Royal George of 1756 under the quarterdeck showing one vertical tier of guns and their tackles. Note that the ports are staggered vertically, so they do not fall one above another; each port was a potential weak spot in the framing, so the stresses were spread evenly. Above the ports are additional tackles used to open the gunport lids. The model also accurately depicts the thickness of the hull, and demonstrates the prominent hanging knees that fastened the beams to the hull sides; there are also similarly shaped knees fitted in the horizontal plane (called lodging knees), but these are more difficult to make out.
[NMM L2300-2]

The most radical change in the use of this level took place with the introduction of steam screw propulsion, and this only affected the three-decker during the final decade of its development. The tremendous weight and volume of the early steam reciprocating engine and its associated steam boilers, together with the vast amounts of coal required to fuel those boilers, could only be accommodated low down in the ship, and thus required to occupy the majority of the space available in the hold; indeed, the height of the machinery was such that it reached above the level of the orlop deck, thereby diminishing the space available there.

The deck above the hold was the orlop, the only deck where there were no ports to provide air or illumination, because it was level with (and often, in a fully loaded ship, below) the waterline. Midships on this level were to be found the cable tiers, stowage for the miles of spare cables which the First Rate was required to carry. Here too would be found the sea-chests and other bulky belongings of the seamen and marines. A separate compartment was the sail room, where the spare sails and extra canvas would be stored. Forwards from the cable tiers were found the small cabins for the boatswain and carpenter adjacent to the ship’s sides, and then stretching into the bows were the storerooms for the multitude of items which were the responsibility of these standing officers.

Above the orlop was the first of the gun-bearing decks – the lower deck – traditionally called the gundeck, although for clarity in this book the latter term is used to describe all the three continuous gun-bearing decks. Here were to be found the heaviest of the ship’s muzzle-loading cannon – 42-pounders (originally called ‘cannon-of-seven’) or 32-pounders (‘demi-cannon’). These were ranged along each side, each inboard of its own gunport and mounted on a carriage with four solid wheels (‘trucks’).

Above and between the guns the ordinary seamen and other lower ratings who formed the bulk of the ship’s company had to find the space to eat, sleep and pass much of their off-duty lives. They were divided for the purpose into ‘messes’, each mess of up to eight men eating together around a wooden table which when not required could be hoisted to the underside of the deck above. The men’s hammocks were likewise slung from hooks in the underside of the deck above, suspended in fore-and-aft rows just 14 inches apart (although it should be appreciated that with half the crew on watch at any one time, a careful allocation of the watches into alternating hammocks meant that the usable width was 28 inches much of the time). When not in use the hammocks and the bedding within them were regularly taken to upper levels for drying and airing, an essential process given the perpetual damp and fetid air in which the men lived (in anything close to rough weather, the gunports on this level remained shut). From the eighteenth century, rolled hammocks were stowed along the top of the weather deck rails and barricades where, in action, they provided some protection against small-arms fire.

Aft on this lower deck were the gunroom cabins, home to the gunner and other warrant officers. Although these compartments were separated off by thin panels, they were not permanent; in action all these compartments (and those situated in the decks above) had to be knocked down to provide unimpeded movement between the guns. At the other end of the lower deck, towards the bows, a low wooden wall, several feet high, separated off the bows. The wall served to retain water entering through the hawse-holes, ports in the sides through which anchor cables could move when a ship was raising or lowering its anchors; a secondary function of this wall was to provide accommodation for the livestock carried aboard – this compartment thus being termed the ‘manger’. Inevitably, the animals lived in even worse condition than the humans aboard, not infrequently being drowned by heavy seas surging through the hawse-holes, until such time as they were butchered for the crew’s fresh food.

THE layout of ‘inboard works’ was sometimes represented as red lines on the external sheer plan, but eventually a separate profile draught was produced, like this one for the second Queen Charlotte. By this date, many internal features were standardised and the draught needed little specific detail. The diagonal rectangles in dashed lines are top riders, which were in vogue during the 1790s – additional strengthening pieces fitted over the internal planking, they were eventually judged counter-productive as they produced local strength but transferred the stresses to other less rigid parts of the hull, where they did disproportionate damage; they were abandoned by Admiralty Order of 1806 and thereafter usually removed on refit.
[NMM J1996]

Centrally placed among the row of gunports on this level was the entry port, primarily for use in harbour. This amounted to a complete door in the side of the vessel, to avoid the necessity of less agile visitors having to climb the complete side of the ship in order to clamber over the bulwarks. At sea, this entrance could be replaced by a standard gunport. In early three-deckers there was a single entry port, conventionally positioned amidships on the port side; later First Rates also had a corresponding entry port on the starboard side.

THE orlop deck of the Britannia, dated February 1818, shows a rationalised layout of cabins aft and of storerooms forward. Wartime experience had lead to many improvements in details (especially to magazine and powder-handling arrangements) and in 1815 a committee under Sir Thomas Byam Martin synthesised all these advances into a wide-ranging report on stores and fittings that was adopted as standard practice from 1816. Among other details was the introduction of a gratins for airing the breadroom, which can be seen in the fore peak of this draught. The layout of the platforms below is indicated in green.
[NMM J1964]

In the bows on this level, directly below the forecastle, was often situated the sick-bay, for personnel recuperating from illness or surgery. Its occupants thus benefited from fresh air but also from the warmth of the galley-chimney which passed through it. On other First Rates, such as the Victory (of 1765), the sick bay was on the middle deck, forwards of the galley.

Amidships on this deck was the waist, open to the weather, although over the years there was a gradual process of diminishing this opening by widening the gangways along each side of the ship linking the quarterdeck and forecastle, so that eventually it was covered by a series of gratings. In practice, much of this opening, and later the gratings, were covered by rows of spare masts and spars, on top of which were stowed the various small boats, barges, gigs, cutters and yawls, which when required could be hoisted outboard for use.

Above the upper deck there were superstructures both forwards and aft, separated by the ship’s open waist. These superstructures were the descendants of the towering castles which the medieval warship carried both forwards and aft, now much reduced in size. The structure towards the bows still bore the name of the forecastle (as it does to the present day), although it only rose a single level above the upper deck. Unlike the decks below, it did not quite reach the stem of the ship, ending in a flat transverse panel (the beakhead bulkhead). In the seventeenth century this was often two-decks high, including the middle deck, and mounted forward-firing guns, but in the early nineteenth century this bulkhead disappeared altogether, and the forecastle was extended right to the stem. The forecastle covered the forward upper deck guns, protecting their crews from the weather as well as from enemy fire. On top of it were mounted a few smaller guns (6-pounders, later 9-pounders and finally 12-pounders), usually long-barrelled – and long-range – ‘bow-chasers’ firing forwards over the beakhead bulkhead rails; by the eighteenth century these were the only forward-firing guns on the ship. With the introduction of the slide-mounted carronade in the late 1770s, at least one pair of these short-barrelled and primarily anti-personnel weapons were also stationed on the forecastle deck.

The poop deck served to protect the accommodation on the quarterdeck below, and in the late seventeenth century it was topped by tiny cabins against the taffrail for the ship’s trumpeters; these were inflated into a ‘topgallant poop’ in a few ships, before being entirely abolished in the mid-eighteenth century. However, from 1780 until late in the Napoleonic era further carronades were positioned on the poop behind solid wooden barricades. Right aft was the ship’s main stern lantern, and the ensign staff bearing the appropriate ensign – red, white or blue – for the flag officer aboard.

The large number of men carried by a First Rate reflected primarily the need to man its guns in action. This varied over the years, but an example from 1677 shows how the 780 men aboard a ‘standard’ First Rate were intended to be allocated. In 1677 three 100-gun First Rates had this establishment – the Prince, Royal Charles and Royal James. The Britannia had two extra guns on the quarterdeck and just two 3-pounders on the poop, while the Royal Sovereign was established with 24-pounders (vice culverins) on the middle deck.

It should be noted that, since a ship would rarely be engaged with enemies on both sides simultaneously, in practice a gun crew comprised the men allocated to a pair of guns on opposite sides of the ship – double the number per gun listed above.

Changes in the formally established guns of each First Rate can be traced through the preceding chapters of this book, but it is worth making a couple of general points. By the time of the 1703 Guns Establishment, all the lower deck guns were intended to be 32-pounders (demi-cannon of 9¾ft length) but a divergence had emerged between the larger Royal Sovereign and Royal William on one side and the smaller First Rates on the other, the Britannia being somewhere between the two groups (see below). The middle deck had culverins of 9½ft length and the upper deck demi-culverins of 9ft length. The table below shows the highest/lowest number of guns established, with the highest figure being for wartime use and the lowest being the normal peacetime allocation. Interestingly, under this Establishment the difference between First and Second Rates was at its most minimal, with the latter (except for the anomalous smaller Saint Michael) simply carrying four fewer guns of the same calibre as the First Rates.

The revised Guns Establishment of 1716 removed the small poop guns, and all First Rates were now to have fourteen pairs of guns on each continuous deck. But while the Second Rates held to their 32-pounders, 18-pounders and 9-pounders, the First Rates now carried either 32-pounders (of 55cwt and 10ft length) or 42-pounders (of 65cwt and 10ft length) on the lower deck, with the 32-pounders gradually giving way to the larger calibre; they received 24-pounders (51cwt guns of 10ft length) on their middle decks and 12-pounders (35cwt guns of 9½ft length) on their middle decks. These differences in the calibres of individual guns were to remain the significant difference between First and Second Rates throughout the next century, even when the difference between the actual number of guns carried was fairly minute.

The 1703 Establishment of Guns