HMS Firm (1759)

Last updated

History
Naval Ensign of Great Britain (1707-1800).svg Great Britain
NameHMS Firm
Ordered11 August 1756
BuilderPerry, Blackwall Yard
Launched15 January 1759
FateSold out of the service, 1791
NotesHarbour service from 1784
General characteristics [1]
Class and type Edgar-class ship of the line
Tons burthen1297 tons
Length154 ft (47 m) (gundeck)
Beam43 ft 6 in (13.26 m)
Depth of hold18 ft 4 in (5.59 m)
PropulsionSails
Sail plan Full-rigged ship
Armament
  • 60 guns:
  • Gundeck: 24 × 24 pdrs
  • Upper gundeck: 26 × 12 pdrs
  • Quarterdeck: 8 × 6 pdrs
  • Forecastle: 2 × 6 pdrs

HMS Firm was a 60-gun fourth rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, launched on 15 January 1759 at Blackwall Yard, London. [1]

Her carpenter from 1775 was James Wallis, who had previously served aboard HMS Resolution with Captain James Cook on his second voyage to the Pacific. [2]

She was on harbour service from 1784, and was broken up in 1791. [1]

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 Lavery, Ships of the Line vol.1, p177.
  2. Beaglehole 1959, p.874

Related Research Articles

James Cook British explorer (1728–1779)

James Cook was a British explorer, navigator, cartographer, and captain in the British Royal Navy, famous for his three voyages between 1768 and 1779 in the Pacific Ocean and to Australia in particular. He made detailed maps of Newfoundland prior to making three voyages to the Pacific, during which he achieved the first recorded European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands, and the first recorded circumnavigation of New Zealand.

John Cawte Beaglehole was a New Zealand historian whose greatest scholastic achievement was the editing of James Cook's three journals of exploration, together with the writing of an acclaimed biography of Cook, published posthumously. He had a lifelong association with Victoria University College, which became Victoria University of Wellington, and after his death it named the archival collections after him.

HMS <i>Endeavour</i> 18th-century Royal Navy research vessel

HMS Endeavour was a British Royal Navy research vessel that Lieutenant James Cook commanded to Australia and New Zealand on his first voyage of discovery from 1768 to 1771.

HMS <i>Resolution</i> (1771) 18th-century sloop of the Royal Navy

HMS Resolution was a sloop of the Royal Navy, a converted merchant collier purchased by the Navy and adapted, in which Captain James Cook made his second and third voyages of exploration in the Pacific. She impressed him enough that he called her "the ship of my choice", and "the fittest for service of any I have seen".

Tobias Furneaux 18th-century English navigator and explorer

Captain Tobias Furneaux was an English navigator and Royal Navy officer, who accompanied James Cook on his second voyage of exploration. He was one of the first men to circumnavigate the world in both directions, and later commanded a British vessel during the American Revolutionary War.

HMS <i>Discovery</i> (1774) Full-rigged collier best known for James Cooks third voyage

HMS Discovery was the consort ship of James Cook's third expedition to the Pacific Ocean in 1776–1780. Like Cook's other ships, Discovery was a Whitby-built collier originally named Diligence when she was built in 1774. Purchased in 1775, the vessel was measured at 299 tons burthen. Originally a brig, Cook had her changed to a full-rigged ship. She was commanded by Charles Clerke, who had previously served on Cook's first two expeditions, and had a complement of 70. After Cook was killed in a skirmish following his attempted kidnapping of Hawaiian leader Kalaniʻōpuʻu, Clerke transferred to the expedition's flagship HMS Resolution and John Gore assumed command of Discovery. She returned to Britain under the command of Lieutenant James King, arriving back on 4 October 1780.

HMS <i>Rose</i> (1757)

HMS Rose was a 20-gun (Seaford-class) sixth-rate post ship of the Royal Navy, built at Blaydes Yard in Hull, England in 1757. Her activities in suppressing smuggling in the colony of Rhode Island provoked the formation of what became the Continental Navy, precursor of the modern United States Navy. She was based at the North American station in the West Indies and then used in the American Revolutionary War. She was scuttled in the harbour of Savannah, Georgia in 1779. A replica was built in 1970, then modified to match HMS Surprise, and used in two films, Master and Commander: Far Side of the World and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.

Zachary Hicks was a Royal Navy officer, second-in-command on Lieutenant James Cook's first voyage to the Pacific and the first among Cook's crew to sight mainland Australia. A dependable officer who had risen swiftly through the ranks, Hicks conducted liaison and military duties for Cook, including command of shore parties in Rio de Janeiro and the kidnapping of a Tahitian chieftain in order to force indigenous assistance in the recovery of deserters. Hicks' quick thinking while in temporary command of HMS Endeavour also saved the lives of Cook, Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander when they were attacked by Māori in New Zealand in November 1769.

Isaac Smith (Royal Navy officer) British Royal Navy officer

Isaac Smith (1752–1831) was a Rear Admiral in the Royal Navy and cousin of Elizabeth Cook wife of Captain James Cook, with whom he sailed on two voyages of exploration in the South Pacific. Smith was the first European to set foot in eastern Australia and the first to prepare survey maps of various Pacific islands and coastlines including Tierra del Fuego in South America.

Adventure Bay, Tasmania Town in Tasmania, Australia

Adventure Bay is the name of a locality, a township and a geographical feature on the eastern side of Bruny Island, Tasmania. At the 2016 census, Adventure Bay and the surrounding area had a population of 195.

First voyage of James Cook Combined Royal Navy and Royal Society expedition to the south Pacific

The first voyage of James Cook was a combined Royal Navy and Royal Society expedition to the south Pacific Ocean aboard HMS Endeavour, from 1768 to 1771. It was the first of three Pacific voyages of which James Cook was the commander. The aims of this first expedition were to observe the 1769 transit of Venus across the Sun, and to seek evidence of the postulated Terra Australis Incognita or "undiscovered southern land".

HMS <i>Eagle</i> (1745) Ship of the line of the Royal Navy

HMS Eagle was a 58-gun fourth rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy.

Second voyage of James Cook Exploration voyage from 1772 to 1775

The second voyage of James Cook, from 1772 to 1775, commissioned by the British government with advice from the Royal Society, was designed to circumnavigate the globe as far south as possible to finally determine whether there was any great southern landmass, or Terra Australis. On his first voyage, Cook had demonstrated by circumnavigating New Zealand that it was not attached to a larger landmass to the south, and he charted almost the entire eastern coastline of Australia, yet Terra Australis was believed to lie further south. Alexander Dalrymple and others of the Royal Society still believed that this massive southern continent should exist. After a delay brought about by the botanist Joseph Banks' unreasonable demands, the ships Resolution and Adventure were fitted for the voyage and set sail for the Antarctic in July 1772.

Third voyage of James Cook Royal Navy exploration voyage to the North Pacific from 1776 to 1780

James Cook's third and final voyage took the route from Plymouth via Cape Town and Tenerife to New Zealand and the Hawaiian Islands, and along the North American coast to the Bering Strait.

Thomas Willis (1756-1797) was a sailor with the Second voyage of James Cook.

<i>A Voyage Round the World</i> Work by Georg Forster

A Voyage Round the World is Georg Forster's report on the second voyage of the British explorer James Cook. During the preparations for Cook's voyage, the expedition's naturalist Joseph Banks had withdrawn his participation, and Georg's father, Johann Reinhold Forster, had taken his place at very short notice, with his seventeen-year-old son as his assistant. They sailed on HMS Resolution with Cook, accompanied by HMS Adventure under Tobias Furneaux. On the voyage, they circumnavigated the world, crossed the Antarctic Circle and sailed as far south as 71° 10′, discovered several Pacific islands, encountered diverse cultures and described many species of plants and animals.

Charles Irving was a Scottish naval surgeon and inventor. In 1770, he introduced a method for distillation of seawater to the Royal Navy, and was awarded the sum of £5,000 for his method in 1772. His apparatus for distilling seawater was used on the second voyage of James Cook and on the 1773 expedition by Constantine John Phipps towards the North Pole, in which Irving participated both as surgeon and as scientific collaborator of Phipps. He was later involved in British colonial enterprises in Central America that included an attempt to establish a crown colony on the Mosquito Shore, but his plans were thwarted by Spanish intervention.

<i>A Journal of a Voyage to the South Seas</i> 1773 book about the first voyage of James Cook

A Journal of a Voyage to the South Seas, in His Majesty's ship, the Endeavour is a 1773 book based on the papers of Sydney Parkinson, who accompanied Joseph Banks as botanical illustrator on the first voyage of James Cook. Parkinson died at sea in 1771 on the return voyage, and the Journal was compiled by William Kenrick for Parkinson's brother Stanfield, who quarrelled with Banks about his brother's papers and belongings and attacked Banks and others in the book's preface. A legal injunction prevented the publication of the Journal until after the official account of Cook's voyage, edited by John Hawkesworth, had appeared. A second edition appeared in 1784 with explanatory remarks by John Fothergill.

An Account of the Voyages Undertaken by the Order of his Present Majesty for Making Discoveries in the Southern Hemispheres, and successively performed by Commodore Byron, Captain Wallis, Captain Carteret, and Captain Cook, in the Dolphin, the Swallow, and the Endeavour: drawn up from the journals which were kept by the several commanders, and from the papers of Joseph Banks, Esq. is a 1773 book by John Hawkesworth about several Royal Navy voyages to the Pacific: the 1764–1766 and 1766–1768 voyages of HMS Dolphin under John Byron and Samuel Wallis, the voyage of HMS Swallow under Philip Carteret (1766–1769), as well as the 1768–1771 first voyage of James Cook on HMS Endeavour. Hawkesworth received an advance of £6,000 for editing the three volumes.

References