Good Enough

It often amuses me when people talk of something being "second-rate", or if they're feeling especially venomous, "third-rate". They're referring back to the old Royal Navy "system of rating" that was used to classify ships back in the age of sail; very roughly, ships of a hundred guns upwards were classed as first-rate, ships of 90 to 98 were second-rate, ships of 60-80 were third-rate and so on down to the sixth rate 20-24 gunners.

The interesting thing is that bigger was not necessarily better. The backbone of the Royal Navy from the mid 18th to early 19th centuries was the third-rater, as it was for most other fleets- the French came up with the definitive third-rate in their "seventy-four", a number of which we made off with and liked so much that we built our own 74-gun ships to replace our less-seaworthy 70s. A third-rater had less firepower and durability than the larger first and second rates, but was more seaworthy, faster and gun-for-gun, significantly cheaper to build and operate. While you'd want your first and second rate ships for fleet engagements like Trafalgar, most of the day-to-day work of war at sea was performed by third rates.

The third rate was "Good Enough". You might need two third-raters to engage a first-rate, but for the cost of a first-rate, you might be able to build three third-raters, and for a navy maintaining a blockade of Napoleonic France and responsible for protecting a maritime Empire spread across the planet, the third-rater was the way to go.

So next time you're accusing your local football team of  being third-rate, you're accusing them of being exactly Good Enough.