Q&A · 3:56:21-3:57:24

French-built ships in the post-Napoleonic Royal Navy

Captured French origins and later British rebuilds complicate any percentage for the Royal Navy of 1815.

Question

What percentage of the Royal Navy was French-built at the end of the Napoleonic Wars?

Short answer

Ships of French origin are estimated at roughly the mid-thirty-percent range, although extensive British dockyard rebuilding makes a simple national-build count misleading.

Notes

Captured ships did not remain unchanged French products after entering Royal Navy service. British dockyards adapted many of them, and some underwent refits extensive enough to amount to construction of a substantially new ship under the old identity. French origin must therefore be distinguished from the vessel's physical condition and workmanship at the war's end. A rough mid-thirties estimate is useful only with that definitional caveat, and the proportion varied across parts of the fleet.