Talk:List of steam frigates of the United States Navy

Franklin class
The referenced book explains why USS Merrimack (1855), USS Wabash (1855), USS Roanoke (1855), USS Colorado (1856), and USS Minnesota (1855) should be considered Franklin-class frigate. The class has been listed by several different names: Roanoke in Register of U.S. Navy Ships, Merrimack in The Old Steam Navy, and Wabash on the model at the David Taylor Model Basin. Merrimack was the first ship to commission, and would give its name to the class under the European system of class nomenclature, and the Roanoke's individual plans are believed to have been completed among the first five ships, which gives some credence to that name. The standard system for naming American ship classes is to give the name of the earliest ship ordered to the class. In the case of these ships, all five were completed to the design of the Franklin, built from the materials of the ship-of-the-line some years earlier. Thus, standard American practice terms the class Franklin. --Columbia clipper (talk) 21:27, 4 August 2009 (UTC)