Frankly, I'd say British and French are pretty well matched for historical performance. Spanish... well, there is always the Massive Point Discount option. I understand why Ares did the stats the way they did in the name of "Tournament/Casual Parity," but... well, for historical scenarios I'm starting to think as we on the Stats Committee look at things that more historical scenario performance might require a "total conversion," and my first move developing such a TC would be to double all Burthens so we have more "headroom" for broadsides. (Another idea I'm toying with in tandem with that is to split it so the three broadsides on each side fire and load independently, giving more room to adjust gun-lines and make differences between ships actually matter.)