HMS Assistance (1781)

Last updated

H.M.S. Assistance in Halifax Harbour, Nova Scotia, 1796 2007 CSK 05139 0376 000(023950).jpg
H.M.S. Assistance in Halifax Harbour, Nova Scotia, 1796, sketched by Captain George Gustavus Lennock, R.N.
History
Naval Ensign of Great Britain (1707-1800).svg Great Britain
NameHMS Assistance
Ordered11 February 1778
Builder Peter Baker, Liverpool
Laid down4 July 1778
Launched12 March 1781
CompletedBy 31 December 1781
FateWrecked on 29 March 1802
General characteristics
Class and type50-gun Portland-class fourth rate
Tons burthen1,053 37/94 bm
Length
  • 145 ft 1 in (44.2 m) (overall)
  • 119 ft 9 in (36.5 m) (keel)
Beam40 ft 8 in (12.4 m)
Depth of hold17 ft 6 in (5.33 m)
PropulsionSails
Sail plan Full-rigged ship
Complement350
Armament
  • Upper deck: 22 × 12-pounders
  • Lower deck: 22 × 24-pounders
  • Quarter deck: 4 × 6-pounders
  • Forecastle: 2 × 6-pounders

HMS Assistance was a 50-gun Portland-class fourth rate of the Royal Navy. She was launched during the American War of Independence and spent most of her career serving in American waters, particularly off Halifax and Newfoundland. Assistance was the flagship of several of the commanders of the station. She was in service at the beginning of the French Revolutionary Wars, and was wrecked off Dunkirk in 1801.

Contents

Construction and commissioning

Assistance was ordered from the Liverpool yard of Peter Baker on 11 February 1778, laid down there on 4 July that year, and launched on 12 March 1781. [1] [2] She was completed by 31 December 1781, having cost £10,908.3.3d. to build, and entered service in the English Channel under her first commander, Captain James Worth. [1]

Career

Halyburton Memorial at Sandy Hook in New Jersey Halyburton Memorial, Sandy Hook, NJ.jpg
Halyburton Memorial at Sandy Hook in New Jersey

She escorted a convoy to North America in May 1782, returning to Britain to be paid off in early 1783. Assistance was then refitted at Plymouth and returned to North America in October 1783 under the command of Captain William Bentinck and flying the broad pendant of Captain Sir Charles Douglas. [1] Serving on Assistance at this time was Lieutenant Hamilton Douglas Halyburton, the son of Sholto Douglas, 15th Earl of Morton. He and a party of men were sent out in Assistance's barge to chase deserters, but, landing in the dark and in a snowstorm, they became trapped in mud. When the snowstorm cleared two days later, all 13 of the party had died from exposure. "Had they landed fifty yards on either side from the place they became stranded, the company would have escaped." [3] A memorial was later erected by Lt Halyburton's mother, Katherine, Countess of Morton. Captain Nicholas Sawyer took command in January 1784, flying the broad pendant of Captain Herbert Sawyer. [1]

Assistance returned to Britain in mid-1786 and was paid off. She underwent repairs at Chatham and was recommissioned in 1790 during the Spanish Armament under Captain Lord James Cranstoun. [1] The easing of tensions led to Assistance being paid off in 1791, before recommissioning the following year under Captain John Samuel Smith in order to serve off North America again. [1] She became the flagship of Rear-Admiral Sir Richard King on the Halifax station between August 1792 and January 1793. [1] Captain Arthur Legge took command in February, being replaced by Captain Nathan Brunton in July for service cruising with the Channel Fleet. [1] Captain Henry Mowatt was in command from May 1795, returning the Assistance to Halifax in March 1796, where he captured the 40-gun French frigate Elizabeth on 28 August 1796. [1] Mowatt died in April 1798, and was succeeded in the command of Assistance by Captain John Oakes Hardy, and he from December 1799 by Captain Robert Hall. [1] Hall took her home from Halifax to be repaired at Chatham between October 1800 and January 1801, whereupon she recommissioned under Captain Richard Lee for a return to Halifax. [1]

Fate

On 29 March 1802, Assistance was en route from Dunkirk to Portsmouth when she ran aground on a sandbank near Gravelines. Efforts to free her were unsuccessful, and the impact of waves against her beached hull quickly rendered the vessel unserviceable. The beaching was visible from the Flemish shore, and a local pilot boat and several fishing boats put to sea to come to her aid. By late afternoon Captain Lee accepted that Assistance was stuck fast and unable to sail; he and the crew then abandoned ship. Two marines drowned while attempting to swim to one of the fishing boats, but the remainder of the crew were safely carried to shore in the Flemish craft. The surviving crew members then made their way to Dunkirk, where a ship was hired to return them to England. [4]

A court martial was convened ten days later, to be held aboard HMS Brilliant. Blame for Assistance's loss was laid at the feet of her pilots, Watson Riches and Edmund Coleman, who were found to have acted negligently in not guiding the ship clear of the charted sandbanks off the Gravelines shore. [4] The two men were fined, and jailed for six months in Marshalsea Prison. For his part, Captain Lee was admonished for placing the too much trust in the pilots, and for not showing due regard for the safety of his ship. [4] No formal penalty was imposed, though Lee was denied a new naval command for the following three years. He returned to active service in 1805, as captain of the 74-gun HMS Courageux.

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Winfield. British Warships of the Age of Sail 1714-1793. p. 154.
  2. Colledge. Ships of the Royal Navy. p. 23.
  3. "A Narrative of the disaster that happened to the barge of His Majesty's ship the Assistance" . The Scots Magazine. British Newspaper Archive. 1 January 1790. Retrieved 6 September 2014.
  4. 1 2 3 Grocott 1997, p.127

Related Research Articles

HMS Orestes was an 18-gun Dutch-built brig-sloop of the Royal Navy. She was originally built as the privateer Mars, which the British captured in 1781. She went on to serve during the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War and the French Revolutionary Wars.

HMS <i>Apollo</i> (1794) 38-gun Artois-class fifth rate frigate of the Royal Navy

HMS Apollo, the third ship of the Royal Navy to be named for the Greek god Apollo, was a 38-gun Artois-class fifth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy. She served during the French Revolutionary Wars, but her career ended after just four years in service when she was wrecked on the Haak sands off the Dutch coast.

French frigate <i>Minerve</i> (1794)

Minerve was a 40-gun Minerve-class frigate of the French Navy. The British captured her twice and the French recaptured her once. She therefore served under four names before being broken up in 1814:

HMS Highflyer was a 21-gun wooden screw frigate of the Royal Navy. She was built on the River Thames by C J Mare and launched on 13 August 1851. She spent twenty years in service, including action in the Crimean War and the Second Opium War, before being broken up at Portsmouth in May 1871.

HMS <i>Nile</i> (1839) Ship of the line of the Royal Navy

HMS Nile was a two-deck 90-gun second-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, launched on 28 June 1839 at Plymouth Dockyard. She was named to commemorate the Battle of the Nile in 1798. After service in the Baltic Sea and the North America and West Indies Station, she was converted to a training ship and renamed HMS Conway, surviving in that role until 1953.

HMS <i>Salisbury</i> (1698) Ship of the line of the Royal Navy

HMS Salisbury was a 50-gun fourth rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, built by Richard and James Herring at Baileys Hard on the Beaulieu River in Hampshire, England, and launched on 18 April 1698.

HMS <i>Actaeon</i> (1831) Frigate of the Royal Navy

HMS Actaeon was a 26-gun sixth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy.

French ship <i>Glorieux</i> (1756) Ship of the line of the French Navy

Glorieux was a 74-gun ship of the line in the French Navy. Built by Clairin Deslauriers at Rochefort and launched on 10 August 1756, she was rebuilt in 1777.

HMS Eurydice was a 24-gun Porcupine-class post ship of the Royal Navy built in 1781 and broken up in 1834. During her long career she saw service in the American War of Independence, the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars. She captured a number of enemy privateers and served in the East and West Indies, the Mediterranean and British and American waters.

HMS <i>Castor</i> (1785) Frigate of the Royal Navy

HMS Castor was a 32-gun Amazon-class fifth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy. She served during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. The French briefly captured her during the Atlantic Campaign of May 1794 but she spent just 20 days in French hands as a British ship retook her before her prize crew could reach a French port. Castor eventually saw service in many of the theatres of the wars, spending time in the waters off the British Isles, in the Mediterranean and Atlantic, as well as the Caribbean.

HMS <i>Daedalus</i> (1780) Frigate of the Royal Navy

HMS Daedalus was a 32-gun fifth rate frigate of the Royal Navy, launched in 1780 from the yards of John Fisher, of Liverpool. She went on to serve in the American War of Independence, as well as the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.

HMS <i>Jason</i> (1794) Frigate of the Royal Navy

HMS Jason was a 38-gun Artois-class fifth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy. She served during the French Revolutionary Wars, but her career came to an end after just four years in service when she struck an uncharted rock off Brest and sank on 13 October 1798. She had already had an eventful career, and was involved in several engagements with French vessels.

HMS <i>Seine</i> (1798) Frigate of the Royal Navy

Seine was a 38-gun French Seine-class frigate that the Royal Navy captured in 1798 and commissioned as the fifth-rate HMS Seine. On 20 August 1800, Seine captured the French ship Vengeance in a single ship action that would win for her crew the Naval General Service Medal. Seine's career ended in 1803 when she hit a sandbank near the Texel.

HMS <i>Cleopatra</i> (1779) Frigate of the Royal Navy

HMS Cleopatra was a 32-gun Amazon-class fifth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy. She had a long career, seeing service during the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War, and the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. During the latter wars she fought two notable engagements with larger French opponents. In the first engagement she was forced to surrender, but succeeded in damaging the French ship so badly that she was captured several days later, while Cleopatra was retaken. In the second she forced the surrender of a 40-gun frigate. After serving under several notable commanders she was broken up towards the end of the Napoleonic Wars.

HMS <i>Milan</i> (1805) Frigate of the Royal Navy

HMS Milan was a 38-gun fifth rate frigate of the Royal Navy. She had previously been Ville de Milan, a 40-gun frigate of the French Navy, but served for only a year before being chased down and engaged by the smaller 32-gun frigate HMS Cleopatra. Ville de Milan defeated and captured her opponent, but suffered so much damage that she was forced to surrender without a fight several days later when both ships encountered HMS Leander, a British fourth rate. Milan went on to serve with the Royal Navy for another ten years, before being broken up in 1815, after the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars.

HMS <i>Centurion</i> (1774) Ship of the line of the Royal Navy

HMS Centurion was a 50-gun Salisbury-class fourth rate of the Royal Navy. She served during the American War of Independence, and during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.

HMS <i>Romney</i> (1762) British 50-gun fourth rate

HMS Romney was a 50-gun fourth rate of the Royal Navy. She served during the American War of Independence, and the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars in a career that spanned forty years. Five ships of the Royal Navy have been named HMS Romney. The origins of the name are from the town of New Romney, although it may be that the name entered the Royal Navy in honour of Henry Sydney, 1st Earl of Romney.

HMS <i>Banterer</i> (1807)

HMS Banterer was a Royal Navy Banterer-class sixth-rate post-ship of 24 guns, built between 1805 and 1807 at South Shields, England. She was ordered in January 1805 as HMS Banter but her name was lengthened to Banterer on 9 August 1805.

HMS <i>Adamant</i> (1780) British Portland-class fourth rate warship

HMS Adamant was a 50-gun Portland-class fourth rate warship of the British Royal Navy. She served during the American War of Independence, the French Revolutionary Wars, and the Napoleonic Wars in a career that spanned thirty years.

HMS <i>Comus</i> (1878)

HMS Comus was a corvette of the Royal Navy. She was the name ship of her class. Launched in April 1878, the vessel was built by Messrs. J. Elder & Co of Glasgow at a cost of £123,000.

References