HMS Sheerness (1743)

For other ships with the same name, see HMS Sheerness.

Sheerness
History
Royal Navy EnsignGreat Britain
NameHMS Sheerness
Ordered7 January 1743
BuilderJohn Buxton, Snr, Rotherhithe
Laid down24 January 1743
Launched8 October 1743
CompletedBy 19 November 1743
FateSold on 26 July 1768
General characteristics
Class and type24-gun sixth rate frigate
Tons burthen508 69⁄94 bm
Length
  • 112 ft (34 m) (gundeck)
  • 92 ft 11 in (28.32 m) (keel)
Beam32 ft 1 in (9.78 m)
Depth of hold11 ft (3.4 m)
Sail planFull-rigged ship
Complement140 (160 from 1745)
Armament
  • 24 guns
  • Upper deck: 20 × 9-pounder guns
  • c. 1745 added:
  • Lower deck: 2 × 9-pounder guns
  • Quarterdeck: 2 × 3-pounder guns

HMS Sheerness was a 24-gun sixth rate frigate of the Royal Navy launched in 1743. Commanded by Captain O'Brian, she served on patrol duties in the North Sea during the 1745 Jacobite Rising.

In November 1745, she captured a French ship carrying supplies to Montrose, along with a number of Jacobite officers. They included Charles Radclyffe, de jure Earl of Derwentwater, who was executed at Tower Hill on 8 December 1746.[1]

In the Skirmish of Tongue on 26 March 1746, Sheerness chased the Jacobite Le Prince Charles, formerly HMS Hazard, into the Kyle of Tongue. Its crew disembarked, taking with them £13,000 in gold intended to help finance the Rising, but were intercepted and forced to surrender by government militia.[2]

In 1752, she was equipped with Hales ventilators, worked by a windmill.[3] During the Seven Years' War, she captured the French merchant-ship Auguste off Spain on 18 August 1756; sold to British merchants and renamed 'Augusta', it was wrecked carrying French passengers returning from Quebec to France in 1761.[4]

She was sold in 1768.

  1. ^ Secombe 1896.
  2. ^ Mackay 1906, pp. 190–191.
  3. ^ Buckland, Stephen. "The Newgate Prison Windmill". The Mills Archive. Retrieved 14 November 2022.
  4. ^ "SV Augusta (ex-Auguste)". Wrecksite.eu. Retrieved 7 December 2019.