rdfs:comment
| - Typically displacing around 2000 tons and carrying a crew of 750, the second rates by the second half of the 18th century carried 32-pounder guns on the gundeck, with 18-pounders instead of 24-pounders on the middle deck, and 12-pounders on the upper deck (rather than 18- or 24-pounders on first rates), although there were exceptions to this. Both first and second rates carried lighter guns (and, after 1780, carronades) on their forecastles and quarterdecks.
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abstract
| - Typically displacing around 2000 tons and carrying a crew of 750, the second rates by the second half of the 18th century carried 32-pounder guns on the gundeck, with 18-pounders instead of 24-pounders on the middle deck, and 12-pounders on the upper deck (rather than 18- or 24-pounders on first rates), although there were exceptions to this. Both first and second rates carried lighter guns (and, after 1780, carronades) on their forecastles and quarterdecks. The three-decker second rate was mainly a British type, and was not built by other European navies to any great degree. Apart from its unhandiness, in terms of sheer firepower it was matched or even over matched by many of the large 80 and 74-gun two-deckers used by the French and Spanish navies instead. The additional deck did, however, give the second rate an advantage in close combat, and it had the further tactical advantage of sometimes being mistaken by the enemy for a first rate, which could possibly make enemy commanders reluctant to press an attack.
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