Guadeloupe (ship, 1763)

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HMS Guadeloupe was a British frigate 6th rank with 28 guns . She belonged to the Coventry class comprising a total of 12 ships and served first in the Royal Navy from 1764 to 1781 , then in the French Navy from 1781 to 1786 .

Construction and technical data

The ship was designed by Sir Thomas Slade and was to be built according to the building order of September 19, 1757 by the shipbuilder John Williams in Neyland in Pembrokeshire ( Wales ); However, since this went bankrupt, the construction contract was then awarded on June 29, 1758 to the Plymouth Naval Dockyard . The keel was laid on May 8, 1759. The ship got its name on October 28, 1760 expired on December 5, 1763 from the stack and was made in March 1764 under John Ruthwen into service. The final equipment was completed on July 11, 1764. The construction cost was 8,041 pounds and 4 pence .

The Coventry- class ships were among the earliest and smallest frigates built by the Royal Navy in the 18th century, and their design was typical of the early frigates, with a raised foredeck on which the foremast stood and a long quarterdeck with the crossmast behind the helm . The oak hull of the Guadeloupe was 36.1 m on the cannon deck, 29.7 m long and 10.3 m wide at the keel . The ship was rigged as a full ship and measured according to the "Builder's Old Measurement" method with 586 and 30/94 "tons burden", which was customary at the time. The armament consisted of 24 9-pounders on the upper deck and four 3-pounders on the quarterdeck ; there were also twelve ½-pounder rotating guns on the upper deck. The total weight of one broadside was 53.06 kg. According to the draft, the ship's crew numbered 200 men.

fate

Royal Navy

The Guadeloupe initially served in the Mediterranean for several years from August 1764 . The future admiral William Cornwallis became their commander in September 1766 and commanded them there and then until 1773 first in their native waters and finally from June 1769 off the North American east coast and in the Caribbean . From September 1777 to April 1778 it was overhauled in Portsmouth , which cost 9,242 pounds, 13 shillings and 4 pence, more than the original construction. After her re-commissioning in April she sailed on June 9, 1778, now under the command of Hugh Robinson, back to North America, where the American War of Independence had begun two years earlier . In February and March 1779 her hull was partially clad with copper in Portsmouth , which with repairs carried out at the same time cost 2801 pounds, 16 shillings and 2 pence, and on May 27, 1779 she sailed again for North America.

On March 16, 1781, the Guadeloupe was present at the sea ​​battle at Cape Henry at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay between a British squadron under Vice Admiral Mariot Arbuthnot and a French squadron under Admiral Charles René Dominique Sochet, Chevalier Destouches , but without taking part in the fighting.

During the Battle of Yorktown in October 1781, which sealed the outcome of the American Revolutionary War, the British Commander-in-Chief, General Charles Cornwallis , had the Guadeloupe anchored near the city in order to use its cannons to repel the allied American and French. (He had the cannons of the 44-cannon frigate HMS Charon , also anchored in the York River , brought ashore to use them there.) On October 9, the Guadeloupe came under direct and heavy fire, from which it was still able to evade the Charon caught fire. The following day, however, the crew had to sink their ship themselves , as it was too badly damaged, the enemy was threatened with containment, and they did not want to let the ship fall into enemy hands.

French Navy

The ship was lifted by the French in the same year and then served as La Guadeloupe with a crew of 280 sailors and marines in the French Navy. The armament now consisted of 24 French 9-pounders and four French 4-pounders on the quarter deck, with a broadside weight of 56.78 kg. In 1785 the armament was changed; it then consisted of 20 French 8-pounders and six French 4-pounders on the forecastle and the quarterdeck, and the broadside weight was reduced to 45.03 kg. In 1786 the ship was decommissioned in Rochefort and deleted from the ship list.

Footnotes

  1. ^ John D. Grainger: The Battle of Yorktown, 1781: A Reassessment. Boydell Press, Woodbridge, 2005, ISBN 1-84383-137-6 , p. 125
  2. ^ David J. Hepper: British Warship Losses in the Age of Sail, 1650-1859. Jean Boudriot, Rotherfield, 1994, ISBN 0-9488-6430-3 , p. 66.
  3. ↑ Demerliac, p. 69, # 429.

Web links

literature

  • Robert Gardiner: The First Frigates . London: Conway Maritime Press, London, 1992, ISBN 0-85177-601-9
  • David Lyon: The Sailing Navy List . London: Conway Maritime Press, London, 1993, ISBN 0-85177-617-5
  • Rif Winfield: British Warships in the Age of Sail, 1714 to 1792 . Seaforth Publishing, London, 2007, ISBN 978-1-84415-700-6
  • Alain Demerliac: La Marine De Louis XVI: Nomenclature Des Navires Français De 1774 À 1792 . Éditions OMEGA, Nice, 1996, ISBN 2-906381-23-3