Five subordinate officers and twenty-five seamen made up the crew.
Easily known by grappling-irons which were always fitted to their yards, the fire-ship saw its role growing less in the early years of the eighteenth century.

It was finally to disappear from the fleets _whose speed it delayed and whose evolutions were by it complicated_.

As the ships-of-war grew larger, their action in concert with fire-ships became daily more difficult.

On the other hand, there had already been abandoned the idea of combining them with the fighting-ships to form a few _groups_, _each_ provided with all the means of attack and defence.

The formation of the close-hauled line-of-battle, by assigning the fire-ships a place in a second line placed half a league on the side farthest from the enemy, made them more and more unfitted to fulfil their office.