DonMeixner

"...Just a thought here. Are Frigates in the American navy of this same time period significantly diferent from the Royal navy? My information says yes. So there may be some confusion here in this thread because of two diferent navy's definitions..."

Don,

The US definition of a frigate was similar to that of he navies of Europe, however, as I understand it, there was certain internal political opposition to the USA having ships-of-the-line.
The situation was resolved after a fashion by a Mr Humphries, who designed a class of 'Frigates' (acceptable to oppponants of a l-o-b navy), which were among the biggest in their class anywhere in the world ('Constitution' class?) and capable of being 'over-gunned' (given more guns than their nominal rate) if the need applied.
In order to fight ships of this size, the Royal Navy had to have bigger ships (74s?) 'Rezeéd' - cut down to single deck ships for use as frigates - these, of course, would still not have the speed of a purpose built frigate, but at least they could live in a fight with one of the Huimphries ships.
Other American frigates were of a more 'conventional' size, and fought actions without the advantge of size, and with various degrees of success - depending on the qualities of their captains and crews on one hand, and of their opponents on the other.
I recommend "The eyes of the Fleet" by Anthony Price, as worth a read.

Walrus