HMS America (1777)

HMS America was a 64-gun third-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, launched on 5 August 1777 at Deptford.[1]

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

Plan showing the body, sheer lines, and longitudinal half-breadth proposed for America
History
United Kingdom
Name: HMS America
Ordered: 18 June 1771
Builder: Deptford Dockyard
Launched: 5 August 1777
Fate: Broken up, 1807
General characteristics [1]
Class and type: Intrepid-class ship of the line
Tons burthen: 1370 bm
Length: 159 ft 6 in (48.62 m) (gundeck)
Beam: 44 ft 4 in (13.51 m)
Depth of hold: 19 ft (5.8 m)
Propulsion: Sails
Sail plan: Full rigged ship
Armament:
  • 64 guns:
  • Gundeck: 26 × 24-pounders
  • Upper gundeck: 26 × 18-pounders
  • Quarterdeck: 10 × 4-pounders
  • Forecastle: 2 × 9-pounders

She took part in the Battle of the Chesapeake on 5 September 1781, and on 12 April 1782 saw action underr command of Captain Thompson in the white squadron as part of the Battle of the Saintes against a huge French fleet.[2]

In 1795 was part of the British fleet at the Battle of Muizenberg.

America was under way off the Azores on 13 December 1800 when she ran against the Formigas Reef and suffered severe damage to her hull. With some difficulty she was refloated with the tide and returned to harbour. On 27 December America's captain and senior officers were court martialled aboard HMS Carnatic, which was anchored off Port Royal, Jamaica. All were acquitted when the court established that the grounding had been caused by errors in the ship's charts, upon which the Reef was marked as being substantially to the south of its actual location.[3]

Following the grounding, America was withdrawn from active service and redesignated as a prison ship. She was decommissioned and broken up in 1807.[1]

Notes
  1. Lavery 2003, p. 181.
  2. Famous Fighters of the Fleet, Edward Fraser, 1904, p.108
  3. Grocott 1997, p. 103
gollark: Magic systems generally care about higher-level objects and what humans do and whatever, instead of describing universal physical laws.
gollark: *Our* universe has cold uncaring physics, which life, particularly intelligent life, can exploit like everything else if it researches them enough.
gollark: Thus, my probably horribly flawed way to categorize it is that magic is where the universe/setting is weirdly interested in sentient beings/life/humans/etc, and generally more comprehensible to them.
gollark: I was thinking about this a lot a while ago, and determined that magic wasn't really an aesthetic since there are a few stories which have basically everything be "magic" which does identical things to technology.
gollark: There isn't *that* much difference between "magic" and "weird physics".

References
  • Grocott, Terence. Shipwrecks of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Eras. London: Chatham Publishing. ISBN 1861760302.
  • Lavery, Brian (2003). The Ship of the Line - Volume 1: The development of the battlefleet 1650-1850. Conway Maritime Press. ISBN 0851772528.
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