Quote:
Originally Posted by TopHatter
True, the raw materials were first class.
But there's more to making an effective fighting ship - much less a navy - than even top of the line raw materials.
And the good subjects of Great Britain certainly didn't consider them to be anything but a mob of upstart colonials, certainly nothing their beloved Royal Navy should have been able to handle without a sweat.
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Oh agreed, what I'm saying though is that from the Peace of Amiens, a lot of pressed sailors, shipwrights and even officers used the opportunity of being thrown up on the hard to go where the work was, ie America. Thus while the USN was fledgling, her shipbuilding skills and crew skills weren't. The American crews had the added incentive of if they were captured, many of them would have been hung as deserters, being still officially on the RN register.