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Monday, November 01, 2004
The English 3rd Rate Antelope built in 1651
The English 3rd Rate Antelope, built in 1651 at Woolwich, has interested me for a long time. She was big: 828 tons burden. Her dimensions were 120ft x 36ft x 16ft. I estimate her length on the gundeck to have been 150ft. The Commonwealth 3rd Rates had more rake than the 4th Rates. We really know very little about her. We think that she carried 56 guns in 1652, before she was wrecked in a storm off of Denmark. I would guess that she carried demi-cannons (32pdr) on her lower tier. I believe that she was big enough to have had an upper tier of culverins (18pdr). I would guess that she had demi-culverins for the rest (on her quarterdeck). There is a possibility that she had mixed guns on each tier, with only a partial set of demi-cannon on the lower tier, with the rest being culverins and only a partial tier of culverins on the upper tier, with the balance being demi-culverins. We lack good information from this period from the published sources. Frank Fox says that the records probably exist. The problem is that the records are in a jumble, and no one has been ready to take the time to find them. Certainly, there is no funding for such an effort.
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