First rate was the designation used by the Royal Navy for its largest ships of the line. While the size and establishment of guns and men changed over the 250 years that the rating system held sway, from the early years of the 1700s the first rates comprised those ships mounting 80 guns or more on three gundecks. In the Nelsonic period (around 1800), a first rate carried over 800 crew and displaced in excess of .