Cost of an Ancient Warship
 

I'm trying to understand the cost of building an oceangoing ship in
some terms I can understand. I great answer would be of the form
"To build an 80 ft sailing vessel in 1492 took about 14,000 man/hours" or
something like that.

Or "One could buy a 100 ft sailing vessel in Venice for 9000 florins,
and each florin could hire a skilled worker for a week."

I'm interested in any time period from ancient Egypt to maybe Napoleon.
I'm just trying to get an order of magnitude informed guess.

Significant Google searching didn't help. Can anyone here help?

Cost of an Ancient Warship
 

On Mon, 25 Aug 2003 20:33:51 -0400, "Charles Talleyrand"
wrote:

I'm interested in any time period from ancient Egypt to maybe Napoleon.
I'm just trying to get an order of magnitude informed guess.
Significant Google searching didn't help. Can anyone here help?

10 seconds of Googling for HMS VICTORY indicates that she "cost £63,176. For
comparison, this would be equivalent to the cost of building an aircraft
carrier today."

http://www.hms-victory.com/factsandfigures.htm

--
Andrew Toppan --- --- "I speak only for myself"
"Haze Gray & Underway" - Naval History, DANFS, World Navies Today,
Photo Features, Military FAQs, and more - http://www.hazegray.org/

Cost of an Ancient Warship
 

On Tue, 26 Aug 2003 01:39:59 +0100, "Mycroft" wrote:

these ships were used for decades. Victory was laid down before Nelson was
born and at the time he was given his choice of flagship she was a prison
hulk, but he wanted her for sentimental reasons.

Let's see...surveyed 1797, unfit for service, handed over for conversion to
hospital ship, but reconsidered as a 1st rate after IMPREGNABLE was lost.
Refit at Chatham 1800-1803, and sailed for the Med 16 May under Hardy with
Nelson aboard.

Considering the refit began 4 years before Nelson came aboard, and in the
interim Nelson had been off fighting at Copenhagen, I really don't see that he
had anything to do with her fate at that point.


--
Andrew Toppan --- --- "I speak only for myself"
"Haze Gray & Underway" - Naval History, DANFS, World Navies Today,
Photo Features, Military FAQs, and more - http://www.hazegray.org/

Cost of an Ancient Warship
 

Andrew Toppan wrote:

10 seconds of Googling for HMS VICTORY indicates that she "cost =
=A363,176. For
comparison, this would be equivalent to the cost of building an aircraft
carrier today." =20

According to the calculator at the Economic History Services
website (http://www.eh.net/ehresources/howmuch/poundq.php),
=A363,176 in 1765 would be the equivalent of about =A35.3 million in
2002. I don't think you could build much of an aircraft carrier
for that.

That's not so much to dispute the HMS Victory website as to show
that trying to compare purchasing power from different eras is a
tricky business.

Mark Sieving

Cost of an Ancient Warship
 

"Andrew Toppan" wrote in message ...
On Mon, 25 Aug 2003 20:33:51 -0400, "Charles Talleyrand"
wrote:

I'm interested in any time period from ancient Egypt to maybe Napoleon.
I'm just trying to get an order of magnitude informed guess.
Significant Google searching didn't help. Can anyone here help?

10 seconds of Googling for HMS VICTORY indicates that she "cost £63,176. For
comparison, this would be equivalent to the cost of building an aircraft
carrier today."

http://www.hms-victory.com/factsandfigures.htm



And the USS Constitution cost $302,718 in 1797 US dollars,
although the Brits could build a 74 gun ship for less.
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/s...nstitution.htm
http://www.geocities.com/Broadway/Al...43/supfrig.htm


I'm trying to understand these numbers in terms of something like
manhours needed to build the ship. I note that the pay for a US
sailor was 10-17 US$ per month. Therefore it took something
like 25,000 man-months to build a Constitution (or a British 74).
Does this seem reasonable?

If you're curious, the Constition was 3x over budget in part due to
political problems with Congressional funding, and is therefore a bad
example to use. That's why I'm asking for other examples. And please
don't pull this thread into a 'Congress has always sucked' direction. Can
we please have one thread without current politics?

Can someone offer other examples, particularly from a different
time period and/or a different sized ship? That would be
most helpful.


-Thanks

Cost of an Ancient Warship
 

In 1815 the aervage wage for an unskilled laborer in Britain was
around 15 shillings per week. A highly skilled craftsman like
a cooper or carpenter could make 30 shillings per week

However these costs for Victory need clarification

Do they apply to the hull only or included rigging ?

How about the guns ?


Off hand, I doubt that the guns were included in the Victory sum given.

The (iron) guns for a ship of the line would cost roughly as much as the raw
hull itself - but this is complicated by the fact that a gun could last a
very, very long time indeed, several lifetimes of an individual ship, so
that a new-built ship could inherit older guns that were already paid for so
to speak. 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.

Staale Sannerud

Cost of an Ancient Warship
 

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

Cost of an Ancient Warship
 

"Vince Brannigan" wrote in message
...


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


The table at
http://www.cwartillery.org/art-cost.html

shows bronze guns costing between 4 times and 6 times
an iron gun in the early 1860's

Keith

Cost of an Ancient Warship
 

On Mon, 25 Aug 2003 21:05:02 -0400, Andrew Toppan
wrote:

On Mon, 25 Aug 2003 20:33:51 -0400, "Charles Talleyrand"
wrote:

I'm interested in any time period from ancient Egypt to maybe Napoleon.
I'm just trying to get an order of magnitude informed guess.
Significant Google searching didn't help. Can anyone here help?

10 seconds of Googling for HMS VICTORY indicates that she "cost £63,176. For
comparison, this would be equivalent to the cost of building an aircraft
carrier today."

http://www.hms-victory.com/factsandfigures.htm

That's an obviously incorrect comparison. How many first rates
did the world have just before the Napoleonic wars? How many
aircraft carriers does it have now? What was the population then,
what is is now?

If the text were written in the 1940's, it might make sense but
today?
____

Peter Skelton

Cost of an Ancient Warship
 

On Mon, 25 Aug 2003 20:33:51 -0400, "Charles Talleyrand"
wrote:

I'm trying to understand the cost of building an oceangoing ship in
some terms I can understand. I great answer would be of the form
"To build an 80 ft sailing vessel in 1492 took about 14,000 man/hours" or
something like that.

Or "One could buy a 100 ft sailing vessel in Venice for 9000 florins,
and each florin could hire a skilled worker for a week."

I'm interested in any time period from ancient Egypt to maybe Napoleon.
I'm just trying to get an order of magnitude informed guess.

Significant Google searching didn't help. Can anyone here help?



You might try "The 74 Gun Ship" Jean Boudret, French originally
but well translated, or Lavery's "The Ship of the Line." I'm not
certain they'll have exactly what you want, but allow a week,
they tend to be adicting and they aren't thin.

Good luck

____

Peter Skelton