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