Steam frigate
type of steam-powered warship
Steam frigates (including screw frigates) and the smaller steam corvettes, steam sloops, steam gunboats and steam schooners were steam-powered warships that were not meant to stand in the line of battle. The first such ships were paddle steamers. Later on the invention of screw propulsion enabled construction of screw-powered versions of the traditional frigates, corvettes, sloops and gunboats.
Evolution
First steam warships
The first small vessel that can be considered a steam warship was the Demologos, which was launched in 1815 for the United States Navy. From the early 1820s, the British Royal Navy began building a number of small steam warships including the armed tugs HMS Comet and HMS Monkey, and by the 1830s the navies of the United States, Russia and France were experimenting with steam-powered warships. Hellenic sloop-of-war Kartería (Καρτερία; Greek for "Perseverance") was the first steam-powered warship to be used in combat operations in history. It was built in 1825 in an English shipyard for the revolutionary Hellenic Navy during the Greek War of Independence, on the order of Capt Frank Abney Hastings, a former Royal Navy officer who had volunteered his services to the Hellenic Navy.
Frigate classification
The frigate and corvette were 'ships'. For a vessel to be called a 'ship' it had to have full rigging, square rigs on three masts. If it had only fore-and-aft rig on the mizzen mast, it was not a ship.
“Steam frigate” enters the record as type of steam-powered warship. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Steam, frigate and type can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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