Rating System Of The Royal Navy

High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The rating system of the Royal Navy and its predecessors was used by that navy between the beginning of the 17th century and the middle of the 19th century to categorise sailing warships, initially classing them according to their assigned complement of men, and later according to the number of their carriage-mounted guns. The first movement towards a rating system may be seen in the 15th century and the first half of the 16th century, when the largest carracks in the Navy (such as the Mary Rose, the Peter Pomegranate and the Henri Grace a Dieu were denoted "Great Ships." This was only on the basis of their roughly-estimated size and not on their weight, crew or number of guns. When these carracks were superceded by the new-style galleons later in the 16th century, the term "Great Ship" was used to formally delineate the Navy's largest ships from all the rest.