First rate battleships "Victory" 1765, "Royal Sovereign" 1786
Illustrations and maps
illustrations
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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 eighteenth century the first rates comprised those ships mounting 100 guns or more on three gundecks. In the Nelsonic period, a first rate carried over 800 crew and displaced in excess of 2,000 long tons (2,000 t). HMS Victory is a 104-gun first rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, laid down in 1759 and launched in 1765. She is most famous as Lord Nelson's flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.
