Re: Fleet Rosters

Sure the numbers seem large, but consider some historical perspective:

In WWI British naval strength alone circa 1916 was something along the
lines
of 37 Dreadnaught class ships (battleships and battlecruisers) Plus an
additional 35-40 older pre-dreads (roughly on par with with FT BC's &
BB's
in crew/tonnage ratio to the bigger dreads) and 120 or so cruisers.  And
even the oldest of these ships were barely 20-25 years old - not bad for
an
economy and population that'd be dwarfed by FT future history standards.

Reaching even farther back Royal Navy strength at the height of the
Napoleonic wars was something along the lines of 100-110 ships of the
line,
not to mention the smaller classes.  Sure a ship of the line is a pretty
small thing compared to a Nimitz carrier, but think in relation to the
times.	They were the single most expensive & complex bits of technology
of
their era.  Acres and acres of forest went into each one, consider the
amount of iron in a ship's 74-100 guns (at a time when truly large scale
iron works were still 50 years in the future).	Crews were on the order
of
500-800 men (and disease, accident, etc. used up men at an astonishing
rate).	One interesting thing is age - wooden men o' war hung around for
a
long time.  Victory was more than 40 years old at Trafalgar, built
around
1763.

		    -M