Rif Winfield - British Warships in the Age of Sail 1714-1792: Design, Construction, Careers and Fates

After the unparalleled successes of the Seven Years War, the Royal Navy of the American Revolutionary period found itself heavily outnumbered and operating against massive odds. Nevertheless, despite the eventual loss of much of British North America, by the end of the war the Royal Navy had asserted its supremacy over its traditional European rivals. It proved capable of mounting large-scale and complicated operations like the relief of Gibraltar in October 1782, as celebrated in this engraving after a painting by Richard Paton. Gibraltar had been under siege by the Spanish since July 1779, and could not have held out much longer when the Channel Fleet escorting a large mercantile convoy broke the Spanish blockade. Admiral Viscount (Richard) Howe conducted this brilliant operation from his flagship, the famous First Rate Victory, the centrepiece of this illustration.

Copyright Rif Winfield 2007

First published in Great Britain in 2007 by
Seaforth Publishing
An imprint of Pen & Sword Books Ltd
47 Church Street, Barnsley
S Yorkshire S70 2AS

Distributed in the United States of America by
MBI Publishing Company
Galtier Plaza, Suite 200, 380 Jackson Street
St Paul, MN 55101-3885, USA

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Winfield, Rif
British warships of the age of sail, 17141792 : design,
construction, careers and fates
1. Great Britain. Royal Navy - History - 18th century
2. Warships - Great Britain - History - 18th century
3. Great Britain - History, Naval - 18th century
I. Title
359.832094109033

ISBN-13: 9781-844157006

PRINT ISBN 978-1-84415-700-6
EPUB ISBN: 978-1-78346-925-3
PRC ISBN: 978-1-78346-692-4

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system,
without prior permission in writing of both the copyright owner and the above publisher.

The right of Rif Winfield to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Designed and Typeset by Eden Valley Press, Kirkby Stephen
Printed and bound in China

Contents

Preface

This book is the second volume in a series covering the ships and vessels of the British Navy during the age of sail; it provides a guide to every vessel which served in or was ordered for the Royal Navy between the accession of King George I (and the start of the Hanoverian Era) in August 1714 and the outbreak of the French Revolutionary War in 1792. A similar volume covering the period from 1793 to 1817 is already in print.

As with the previous volume dealing with the post-1792 fleet, this book gives a summary of the main technical details of each class (design) of vessel built for the Navy, from the huge three-deckers down to the minute brigs, schooners and gunboats, together with building data for each vessel ordered to those designs, as well as equivalent details of the hundreds of enemy warships and privateers captured and added to the British Navy, and large numbers of merchant vessels purchased from civilian sources to augment British naval strength. All vessels already in service in August 1714, and those ordered before 1792 but not completed in time for war service, are also covered. Altogether, some two thousand individual vessels are separately detailed.

This volume likewise includes as far as space allows fairly detailed notes on service histories for each vessel during the years covered, including details of their commanding officers, main deployments, actions in which they were involved (including information on all enemy warships and privateers in whose capture or destruction the British vessel was involved), details and dates of dockyard refits and major repairs with the expenditure if known, and a variety of other relevant information. Details of the dimensions of every vessel (illustrating divergences from the design data), and of the individual shipbuilders involved in the Royal Dockyards as well as the commercial contractors complete this comprehensive singlevolume reference source for every vessel.

Acknowledgements

This book, like its predecessor, was made possible by the collective work of a number of individuals, who generously supplied me with the results of their own research, and offered constructive suggestions for improvements and pointed out the errors that inevitably accumulate in a volume of this size. The service histories for individual vessels, in particular, owe a massive debt to the copious archives of the late David Lyon, whose many years at the National Maritime Museum enabled him to compile detailed records on every vessel; I remain most grateful to Leo (Eleanor) Sharpston, for providing me with these archives.

A number of good friends have again provided an amazing amount of material from their own records. I would in particular pay thanks to Fred Dittmar, David Hepper and John Houghton, who have additionally read through a number of versions of this ever-expanding book and added or corrected regular batches of material. Further additional research has been forthcoming from others too numerous to single out, although John Tredrea deserves special mention for his data on Spanish warships. My sister Jane Winfield and Isabelle Guillou have again exhaustively checked the orthography of French names, often badly misrecorded in British records. If I have forgotten to include anyone in this list, I hope they will accept my apologies.

This work has relied also on the earlier research of a number of writers. David Syrett and R. L. DiNardos Commissioned Sea Officers of the Royal Navy 1660-1815 (Navy Records Society publication, 1994) has been a constant source of reference to verify the full names and ranks (at dates stated) of commanding officers, while David Heppers British Warship Losses in the Age of Sail 1650-1859 (Jean Boudriot Publications, 1994) has provided reliable precise dates for ships fates (often misquoted in many secondary sources). With significant numbers of French and other enemy warships and privateers being incorporated into the British Navy, the published rpertoires of Jacques Vichot, Frank Lecalv and more recently of Alain Demerliac provided substantial verification of much material.

A number of museums and libraries have over the years been of vital assistance in helping my own researches and solving the frequent queries that arose, primarily the staff at the Public Records Office at Kew and the Caird Library in the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, but also a range of museums overseas.

Inevitably much of the effort has been supplied by my publishers, and I am most grateful for the patience and careful production work of Robert Gardiner and Julian Mannering. Robert has selected and arranged use of all the illustrations which have contributed so much to the final appearance of this volume. Finally but most essentially, I need to thank my wife Ann for her patience during the research and writing for this book, and for her constant help and encouragement.

Sources

The data is this book is taken almost exclusively from the archives of the British Admiralty Board, and its subsidiary the Navy Board, primarily that recorded in the archives at Kew and Greenwich. Additional material, particularly on vessels added to the Navy by capture and/or purchase, is taken from the archives of the country concerned where this conflicts with the (often dubious) information in British records.