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I finally got around to posting the only ship of the line I will personally champion. Ladies, gentlemen, bastards, and wenches, I present to you: USS America Laid Down: May 1777 Launched: November 5, 1782 Builder: Colonel James Hackett Admiralty Model by: Robert Bruckner General Characteristics: Country of Origin: United States/13 Colonies Operators: United States, France Type: Ship of the Line Guns: 74 Crew: 626 Length: 182.5ft (55.63m) Beam: 50.5ft (15.39m) Draught: 23ft (7.01m) Displacement: 2,014 tons Speed: 12 knots Armament: 30 x 18-pounder guns 30 x 12-pounder guns 14 x 9-pounder guns (Source) Plans: History: There is, historically, very little information to be gleaned about the nation's very first ship of the line, other than what is readily available on Wikipedia and other public sources. The plans were obtained from Howard Chapelle's "The American Sailing Navy", and are available in my pinned thread American Ship Collection along with other ship drafts belonging to the Continental and American Navies. I'm going to extrapolate on why the armament of the USS America was so light compared to contemporary third rates of the era. I had given the idea in a previous post in the aforementioned thread that the guns for the USS America were probably obtained from the Continental Army after there was no longer a need for it (indeed the Continental Navy was shortly disbanded after the war and some of her armament may have come from ships that were sold off). It seemed my earlier hypothesis was a bit incorrect, as I assumed the guns available to the Continental Army were not much larger than 18-pounder guns. But I do believe that most of her armament, came from the Army, and not other ships in the Navy, though I have no sources to prove this. Little is gleaned of her history and armament after she was transferred to France. I wish her history was a bit more fleshed out and glorious than a trans-atlantic voyage to serve in the French Navy as a gift to replace the loss of Magnifique. Although there are other American ships of the line with longer service in the United States Navy that followed, I feel that their designs would be more out of place than the nation's first large warship. If the devs considered giving the US player base a ship of the line, I feel there is no better proposal.
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