HMS Carysfort (1766)

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

Print by Thomas Whitcombe depicting HMS Carysfort retaking Castor from the French on 29 May 1794
History
Royal Navy EnsignGreat Britain
NameHMS Carysfort
NamesakeJohn Proby, 1st Baron Carysfort, former Lord of the Admiralty
Ordered4 & 20 February 1764
BuilderSheerness Dockyard
Laid downJune 1764
Launched23 August 1766
Completed11 August 1767
CommissionedJune 1767
Honours and
awards		Naval General Service Medal with clasp "Carysfort 29 May 1794"
FateSold on 28 April 1813
General characteristics
Class and type28-gun Coventry-class sixth-rate frigate
Tons burthen58630⁄94 (bm)
Length
  • 118 ft 4 in (36.1 m) (overall)
  • 97 ft 3+1⁄2 in (29.7 m) (keel)
Beam33 ft 8 in (10.3 m)
Depth of hold10 ft 6 in (3.20 m)
Sail planFull-rigged ship
Complement200
Armament
  • As built:
  • Gun deck: 24 × 9-pounder guns
  • QD: 4 × 3-pounder guns
  • 12 × 1⁄2-pdr swivel guns
  • From 1780:
  • Gun deck: 24 × 9-pounder guns
  • QD: 4 × 6-ppounder guns & 4 × 18-pounder carronades
  • Fc: 2 × 18-pounder carronades
  • From 1794:
  • Upper deck: 24 × 9-pounder guns
  • QD: 4 × 6-pounder guns & 4 × 24-pounder carronades
  • Fc: 2 × 24-pounder carronades

HMS Carysfort was a 28-gun Coventry-class sixth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy. She served during the American War of Independence, the French Revolutionary and the Napoleonic Wars in a career that spanned over forty years.

She had a number of notable commanders during this period, and saw action in several single-ship actions against French and American opponents. She took several privateers during the American War of Independence, though one of her most notable actions was the recapture of Castor, a Royal Navy frigate that a French squadron had captured nearly three weeks earlier and a French prize crew was sailing to France. Carysfort engaged and forced the surrender of her larger opponent, restoring Castor to the British, though not without a controversy over the issue of prize money. Carysfort spent the later French Revolutionary and early Napoleonic Wars on stations in the East and later the West Indies. Carysfort returned to Britain in 1806 where she was laid up in ordinary. The Admiralty finally sold her in 1813.