In the imperial-era illustration, a Royal Navy sloop arrives while other powers display their largest warships. The sloop could be defeated locally, but an attack would carry the prospect of a much larger British fleet following. A small ship could therefore observe events and signal interest without the whole fleet being deployed. Being the smallest vessel also complicated claims that Britain was intimidating the other participants. The same reasoning is applied to a patrol frigate backed by a powerful navy. No particular confrontation, date, or named sloop is supplied for the example.
Notable Point · 1:29:55-1:31:34
How a small sloop could signal the fleet behind it
An imperial-era illustration explains how a small ship's political weight can depend on the fleet that would respond to an attack.