Too small to stand in the line of battle and lacking the speed of the frigate, the 50-gun ship was often dismissed as a dinosaur. This book reveals the crucial role the 50-gun ship played in the development of both the battleship and the frigate and this is the first study of the type, from its development in the eighteenth century and its gradual transition from battlefleet to heavy cruiser role. They were revived for the special conditions of colonial warfare during the American Revolution and thereafter, were employed as peacetime flagships for distant stations, achieving final glory leading small craft in anti-invasion operations during the Napoleonic War. The horrible old Leopard, so described in the fiction of Patrick O'Brian, is the subject of the detailed drawings and plans