The characteristics of the French model were a beautifully rounded bow, by no means sharp along the water-line, easy sectional lines developing into a full, powerful forebody and midship section, and great dead rise at half floor. The greatest breadth was well forward of amidships and at the waterline, with a slight, gracefully rounded tumble home to the plank-sheer. The after-body was finely moulded, clean, sharp, and long, with a powerful transom and quarters. The time-honored cod's head and mackerel's tail: the figureheads and ornamentation of the quarters and stern, were veritable works of art. By comparing the models of the British frigates of that day to be seen in the Naval Museum at Greenwich, and the lines of the American frigates and Baltimore clippers of the same period, with the models still preserved in the Louvre, it is easy to trace a family likeness among them all, the parent being of French origin. The grandparent also might easily be identified, in the Italian galleys of Genoa and Venice, though this is of no importance to our present purpose.
That the American vessels showed a marked superiority in point of speed over British men-of-war and merchant ships during these two wars is the more remarkable from the fact that frigates had been built in England for a century and a half, as we have seen, and, while it is true that two vessels for the British Government were built at Portsmouth previous to the Revolutionary War—the
own coasts, and, of course, there had been no cessation in the building of merchant ships during the period preceding the War of 1812.
