OK Vince, found a book with numbers in it, relevant to Danish naval service
in the late 1700s:

First, I misremembered the cost of the guns relative to the cost of the
hull. I stated that they were rougly equal, in fact the guns would cost
around half of the hull. The overall expense was roughly: Hull 50%,
artillery (guns and carriages) 25%, sails and rigging 25%. My bad! (Source:
Linjeskibet Holsten 1772-1814, Ole L Franzen. Numbers taken from an
administrative overview drawn up ca 1780 by the Danish Navy's chief
constructor, Henrik Gerner)

From the document by Gerner we find that the guns, carriages and full
ammunition load of a 70-gun ship ca 1780 cost 35.740 riksdaler (an ordinary
seaman's yearly wages at that time was 60 rdl, a vice-admiral's 2.388 rdl,
just to set the numbers into some kind of context) out of a total "system
cost" of 186.514 rdl for the ship as built and fitted out. The similar kit
for an 80-gun ship cost a whopping 211.069 riksdaler out of a total cost of
390.152 rdl, or around six times as much as for the 70. There are 10 more
guns on the 80 of course, and they are of caliber 36-18-12 pounds instead of
24-18-8 on the 70, but above all they are bronze guns on the 80 (prestige
ship and all that, designed and built as a squadron or fleet flagship) and
plain old iron on the 70. So the 4x figure does not seem to be too far off
the mark. For a bronze-armed 90 the guns cost 212.107 rdl by the way, but
again the calibers are rather smaller than on the 80, total weight of fire
was a smidgeon smaller for the 90 in fact.

Denmark-Norway made both bronze (in Denmark) and iron (in Norway) guns
domestically, so the prices stated should not have been modified for
"balance of payment" reasons. It should be stated though that the last
complete set of naval bronze guns in the country were cast for the 90gun
fleet flagship "Christian VII" ca 1765, so the 1780 numbers discussed in the
last paragraph are probably estimated costs of how much it would take if one
were to buy complete sets for the 80- and 90-gun ships at that date rather
than actual invoice sums! While ships were still being fitted with bronze
guns until after 1800 these were by then old guns that had been around the
block a few times - two-ton lumps of metal did not wear out in a hurry after
all! The most bizarre example I've come across refers to an 80-gun ship
launched in 1790, in 1801 she was listed as carrying 12-pounder bronze guns
cast around 1650(!)

Another document referenced in "Linieskibet Holsten...", presumably written
around 1770, states that the artillery etc for an 80 should cost 47.620
riksdaler - and it is explicitly stated that they are _not_ bronze guns -
while arty for a 70-gun ship would cost 39.035 rdl and a 60-gun ship 31.011
rdl. Here the increase from one ship-class to the next is pretty much
linear, keeping in mind that the bigger ships also carry heavier guns.
(Danish Rigsarkivet archive number: "Orlogsverftet afl. 1945. Reg 154b, nr
92", for what it's worth)

A final note on relative costs: Bronze guns were generally quite lavishly
decorated with coats-of-arms, royal monograms and what have you, while iron
guns were on the whole rather plain. This would add to the cost differential
of course.

Bronze is an alloy of something like 75% copper and 25% tin according to
Google - does anybody know how much those raw metals cost relative to iron
back in the 16-1700s? From what I can gather zinc has lately been ~3 times
as expensive as iron, copper ~6 times as expensive? I'd expect that iron has
grown relatively cheaper since the industrial revoltion - but what do I
know...

Regards,
Staale Sannerud


"Vince Brannigan" skrev i melding
...


Staale Sannerud wrote:
Including the price of the guns in the ship building price would
make sense if the guns were cast especially for that ship, which
sometimes
did happen esp. with bronze guns. They were around 4x as expensive as
iron
ones by the way.

do you have a cite for this 4x figure.

vince

"Ståle Sannerud" wrote

The overall expense was roughly: Hull 50%,
artillery (guns and carriages) 25%, sails and rigging 25%.

Something often commented on in the shot-and-sail genre of fiction (O'Brian,
Forester, etc) is the cost of giving a man of war a pretty colour scheme,
usually out of the officers' pocket. Apparently this was a smart career
move, as scruffy ships didn't impress admirals. Does your source give any
details on at what cost and intervals ships were painted with gold leaf,
etc?

snipped great post

"The Blue Max" skrev i melding
s.com...

"Ståle Sannerud" wrote

The overall expense was roughly: Hull 50%,
artillery (guns and carriages) 25%, sails and rigging 25%.

Something often commented on in the shot-and-sail genre of fiction
(O'Brian,
Forester, etc) is the cost of giving a man of war a pretty colour scheme,
usually out of the officers' pocket. Apparently this was a smart career
move, as scruffy ships didn't impress admirals. Does your source give any
details on at what cost and intervals ships were painted with gold leaf,
etc?

snipped great post



Not in the Danish source, no. However, I bought a book on shipmodeling from
Editions Ancre around Christmas, this is Jean Boudriot's publishing house
and a small booklet written by him discussing painting of French ships in
the late 1700s was enclosed as a surprise bonus. The following data is from
that source (more or less translated from the French text by yours truly, a
language that I am not even remotely fluent in), copied from a posting I
made to a Yahoo discussion group some time back, discussing the appropriate
painting of ship models:

"
Prices as of 1780, "£" = 1 Louis d'or á 20 sols,
1 quintal = 100 livres á 489 gram.

Crushed red ochre oil paint - £40/quintal
Crushed yellow ochre oil paint - £40/quintal
Gray oil paint - £40/quintal
Crushed red and yellow ochre - £5/quintal
Flanders-glue (spacle, I think) - 16s/livre
Sinober red - £6/livre
Lead white - £35/quintal
Lead white oil paint - £43/quintal
Preussian blue - £18/livre
Regular enamel (for azure blue) - 20s/livre
Green oil paint - 32s/livre
Neaples yellow - 32s/livre
Lamp blacking oil paint - 16s/livre
Grey green and mountain green - 16s/livre
Vermillion-red - £6 10s/livre
Nut-oil - £40/quintal
Linseed oil - £30/quintal
Gold leaf in 3.5" square leaves - £2 5s per leaf

For instance, preussian blue was 45 times more expensive than plain
old yellow ochre - they'd use the one for the French royal coat of
arms on the stern, the other for the ship's sides So while I
would not doubt that even something as large as a figurehead could
be very brilliantly painted indeed I'd tend to take exception to
brilliant colours being used on the hull itself to any degree! (And
looking at the price of gold leaf I can certainly see how they
managed to blow 6000 pounds on decorating the Sovereign of the
Seas...)
"

(I hope Outlook Express does not post this in rich-text format, my apologies
in advance if it does...)

It should be obvious that rich colours were for detail-work only, not
something to paint a 180-foot long hull with. In the French navy at least,
the powers that be simply dumped X tons of the cheapest colours on the
captain, and more or less left him to do his worst with it. He was also
given the minimum amount of preussian blue and gold leaf for the
coat-of-arms only, as I recall from Boudriot's "the 74-gun ship". Anything
more, he'd have to fork out the money for it himself I guess.

I'd expect painting of ships to be a more or less continuous process (then
as now, I guess...), given the quality of paints available at the time. Even
the Atlantic liners, in the early 1900s, sometimes arrived in port after the
Atlantic crossing sans large areas of paint at the bows, it having been
stripped right off the hull during a single trip.

Staale Sannerud

"Ståle Sannerud" wrote

For instance, preussian blue was 45 times more expensive than plain
old yellow ochre - they'd use the one for the French royal coat of
arms on the stern, the other for the ship's sides So while I
would not doubt that even something as large as a figurehead could
be very brilliantly painted indeed I'd tend to take exception to
brilliant colours being used on the hull itself to any degree!

Clearly. These figures go a long way towards explaining why the black and
yellow stripe scheme of Nelson's day was so commonplace: it was cheap, as
were the alternatives of red and black or red all over.

In one of the O'Brian's there is a description of the frigate Java as
sporting an extravagant colour scheme of a blue stripe along the hull
between black stripes edged with white. It does indeed sound pricey, and at
40 times the price of yellow one can see why the wealthy captains of pretty
warships were so loth to practice the messy business of gunnery.

I'd expect painting of ships to be a more or less continuous process (then
as now, I guess...), given the quality of paints available at the time.
Even
the Atlantic liners, in the early 1900s, sometimes arrived in port after
the
Atlantic crossing sans large areas of paint at the bows, it having been
stripped right off the hull during a single trip.

I believe this is also the reason why oil tankers are painted red...hides
the rust. I've also heard the other favoured scheme of black hull / white
superstructure is designed to defeat photogrpahy - if you can read the
ship's name the photo is too over- or under-exposed to publish. I think it's
an urban myth though.