When sailing-warship ratings stopped matching fighting power

Should unusually large frigates and later two-deck warships have been promoted into higher sailing-navy rates?

Their traditional ratings remained tied mainly to gun count and deck arrangement, even though heavier ordnance and new construction made the categories overlap; sustained wartime pressure might eventually have produced a revised rating system.

The nominal rate still followed gun count even as actual combat power increasingly depended on gun weight, broadside weight, structure, and hull proportions. Third rates settled around the useful 74- to 80-gun range while large two-deck second rates and unusually powerful single-deck frigates crowded neighboring categories. HMS Warrior makes the mismatch vivid: her one gun deck made her a frigate despite a broadside heavier than that of some multi-deck ships of the line. A longer continuation of Napoleonic-scale war might have forced a revised system, perhaps treating fourth rates as the top tier of frigates, but rapid technological change overtook the inherited categories.