Cost of Ships in the Age of Sail cost compared to today?

Elta

Elta

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Is their any good reference to the cost of ships today and the cost of a full war ship of the line in the age of sail.

Say for example the cost of a destroyer today is XXXXXXXXX pounds for the Royal Navy and a Ship of the line in the 1830s was XXXXXXXX pounds. Is there anyway to see what the relative cost of a ship of the line was?


(I know very little about ships .... so the numbers here are all hypothetical)
Okay say for example a ship of the line has 100 men in the 1830s
and a destroyer has 1,000 men.

After the conversion cost does a destroyer cost 10 times more?


So I guess the actual question I am trying to ask here is
Pound for pound after factoring in conversion rates and budgets (seeing as how the Royal Navy received way more money in say 1812 as % of the country's budgets)

Did it cost more money to put a competent sailor (percentage wise as part of a navy's budget) in a very good ship in 1812 than it does today?


Sorry if I had to reiterate and if it was confusing I am just trying to understand all of this and want the question to be very clear.

I am trying to get a head start on my creative writing class next semester and getting help from people who have taken it from that teacher before. I am working on a awesome 30 page story set in a world that is some what like the age of sail world :D
 
According to this wikipedia article, HMS victory launched in 1765 cost £63,176 equivalent to £50 Million today.

As a modern day comparison the new type 45 destroyers cost around £500 Million each and the new Queen Elizebeth class aircraft carriers will cost around £2 Billion each
 
Aigburth said:
According to this wikipedia article, HMS victory launched in 1765 cost £63,176 equivalent to £50 Million today.

As a modern day comparison the new type 45 destroyers cost around £500 Million each and the new Queen Elizebeth class aircraft carriers will cost around £2 Billion each
Click to expand...

:goodjob:
Good lookin out!
 
The technology involved in modern warships is not comparable to 18th Century warships. I have no doubt that modern signal flags are about the same relative cost as Napoleonic era signal flags*. But radio, with all its associated gear (including extremely expensive cryptographic equipment**), has no equivalent on HMS Victory.

* The signal flags used today are a modification of a signaling system introduced into the Royal Navy in 1803 by an officer who rejoiced in the name of Home Popham.

** After John Walker compromised the U.S. Navy's KW7 and KY8 crypto systems, it was estimated that developing and building replacements cost over $5 billion (in 1975 dollars).
 
Elta said:
(I know very little about ships .... so the numbers here are all hypothetical)
Okay say for example a ship of the line has 100 men in the 1830s
and a destroyer has 1,000 men.
Click to expand...

The numbers should be reversed.

A Napoleonic era ship of the line (74 guns or more) would have a crew of 800 or more men. A modern day U.S. Arleigh Burke class destroyer or British Type 42 destroyer has a crew of about 325.
 
Ambidexter said:
The numbers should be reversed.

A Napoleonic era ship of the line (74 guns or more) would have a crew of 800 or more men. A modern day U.S. Arleigh Burke class destroyer or British Type 42 destroyer has a crew of about 325.
Click to expand...

hmmm *strokes chin*
Thanks! :goodjob:
 
Well crew training costs were lower since during the Napoleonic wars some sailors were pressed into service and orphans were occasionally given to the navy and raised as cabin boys.
 
Aigburth said:
According to this wikipedia article, HMS victory launched in 1765 cost £63,176 equivalent to £50 Million today.

As a modern day comparison the new type 45 destroyers cost around £500 Million each and the new Queen Elizebeth class aircraft carriers will cost around £2 Billion each
Click to expand...

Yeah, but compare the British economy of back then, to now.

Surely the actual cost of the ship is not the only issue here - but also how many resources were available to the country at the time, as well.
 
It looks like the ships didn't take that many resources compared to their modern day equivalents, and the percentage might be lower. The ship itself would be a huge investment, but the return investment often lasted up to a century. Outside of the initial construction labour was pretty cheap, repair could be done relatively simply, and food was rather cheap. The only expense that really depends on the make and model would be the actual weapons.
 
I’m reading The British Seaborne Empire by Jeremy Black and The Rise and Fall of the British Empire by Lawrence James for school. I was surprised to learn that wooden ships had a service life of only about 20 years, due to wood rot and other wear and tear. Ships were also made obsolete by improvements in construction. In addition warships were lost in great number due to weather, accident, combat and occasionally mutiny. As an example, “out of the 317 warships lost in 1803-1815, 223 were wrecked or foundered.” This at a time when the entire British Fleet was about 450 ships on active duty.

I believe by this time the navy was all copper hulled and equipped to determine longitude at sea so casualties from accident and weather must have been even higher in previous decades.

In any case maintaining naval superiority was a serious financial commitment for England.
 
Some of the grander ships had longer lifespans as they were - as today - recycled from main combat roles to cerimonal/ training/ hulk roles, or recycled to theaters where they would not face whatever it was that had superceded them.
 
I've just read "The Republic of pirates" by Colin Woodward. This is a great book (well worth a read), and one of it's greatest features is a list of prices at the beginning of the 18th century.

According to the list, a frigate of 350 tons with 36 guns, fully fitted cost 8200 pounds. That's a small frigate by the way. The biggest were apparently 1800 tons with 100 guns (not sure about this actually). Now compare this with the wage of a shopkeeper in England of 45 pounds per year. This would be middle class I'd say. So that's more than 180 middle class wages for a warship. If a typical income now is $50.000, the equivalent cost of a warship would be $9 million.
 
JerichoHill said:
You've got to account for the technological difference if you want an apples to apples comparison
Click to expand...

A warship now is high-tech, and a warship then was high-tech then. Anyway, I think it's kind of hard to compare over such a large amount of time...
 
In the age of Sail the admiralty was in control.

Nowadays the arms companies have got lobbying
and bribing the politicians down to a very fine art.

This is the primary reason why fully equipped fighting
ships cost 10-100 times as much today as 200 years ago.
 
I think the real question is how much they cost compared to the BNP and the yearly state budget. I think todays ships cost less % of BNP than they did for 200/100 years ago.
 
cFccFc said:
I think the real question is how much they cost compared to the BNP and the yearly state budget. I think todays ships cost less % of BNP than they did for 200/100 years ago.
Click to expand...

Yeah more or less. My goal is to figure out how many fully capable ships they could put on the water then and now when in full war mode. Though it is very hard to compare because we have so many types of ships now..... do you count the cost of an aircraft carriers plane? What about the yearly cost of fuel?
And disposal of fuel ? (like in a nuclear powered sub)

.... I think I have a rough idea now though.
:)
 
cFccFc said:
I think the real question is how much they cost compared to the BNP and the yearly state budget. I think todays ships cost less % of BNP than they did for 200/100 years ago.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's what I figured. But I didn't have GDP data, so I went with middle-class income.
 
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