Corvette Warships – An introduction
A corvette is a small and easily manoeuvrable, lightly armed warship. If you came here lookign for info about the car you can click this text.
Originally, a corvette was defined as a warship larger than a sloop-of-war but smaller than a frigate, and would typically have a single gun deck. During the Age of Sail, corvettes were commonly used to patrol the coast, support large fleets, and engage in minor wars. Corvettes also participated in so called show-the-flag missions. The oldest known reference to a corvette is from the 1670s when they were used by the French Navy.
During the 1600s, most corvettes were 12-18 meters (40-60 feet) long and measured 40-70 tons burthen. They had a single gun deck with 4-8 smaller guns.
The corvettes grew larger and larger over the years and by the year 1800 there were Corvettes that were over 30 m ( 100 ft) long and that measured 400-600 tons burthen. One of the largest corvettes with sails was the 54 m (176 feet) long USS Constellation; a U.S. corvette built in 1855 and fitted with 24 guns. The sheer size of her made some naval experts refer to her as a frigate rather than a corvette.
As the Age of Sail came to an end, the corvettes changed to suit the new times. The first modern corvettes were the Flower class corvettes, a class of 267 UK Royal Navy vessels named after flowers. Among the first modern corvettes you also find a Canadian corvette class namned after cities and towns. The chief duty of these two groups of corvettes was to act as anti-submarine convoy escorts during the Battle of the Atlantic.
The Flower class corvettes were originally designed for offshore patrol work and were therefore ill equipped when it came to protecting Allied convoys in the open ocean. Longer vessels would have been more suitable for open ocean work, while more heavily armed vessels would have been more apt at anti-aircraft defence. Another problem with the flower class corvettes was that they were only marginally much faster than the transport ships, this was not a big problem at the beginning of that battle for the atlantic but did increasingly become one as german subsmarine got faster and faster. These problems forced the Royal navy to use frigates rather than the flower class corvettes as escort ships. A new class of corvettes soon emerged from the shipyards that were to small to produce frigates. The new class was called the castle class and was introduced late in the war and than used well into the 1950s.
The Australian Navy had their own corvettes during WWII called the Bathurst class corvettes. They were primarely meant to be used as mine sweepers and designed after the Bangor class minsweepers, corvettes in this class was namned after Australian towns. In total, 60 were commissioned; 36 for the Royal Australian Navy, 20 for the British Admiralty (although crewed by Australians), and 4 for the Indian Navy.
The bathurst class corvettes were as earlier mentioned designed to be mine sweepers but the WWII forced them to be used in a long row of different areas such as anti-submarine warfare, troop transportation, convoy transports and for bombarding enemy positions. In many situations the lightly armed corvettes had to perform duties for which they were ill equipped considering their small size and slow speed.
Related Posts:
- Related posts on boats
- Boat Anchor Reviews » Blog Archive » Tips On Buying A Bass Boat
- Related posts on history
- History Of Photography Slideshow | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of …
- Media Alert: The People Speak. Tonight on History Channel 8pm ET …