Nonsuch was commissioned in August 1775 as a guardship at Plymouth. She was fitted for the role in December 1776, but sailed for North America on 23 March 1777.[2]
American War of Independence
On 16 January 1777, Nonsuch captured the Rhode Island privateer sloop Charming Sally.[4]
On 7 July 1780 Nonsuch, under the command of Sir James Wallace, captured the brig-rigged cutterHussard of Saint Malo.[7]Hussard was armed with eighteen 6-pounder guns.[8] The Royal Navy took her into service as HMSEcho.
On 14 July, Nonsuch captured the 26-gun frigateBelle Poule off the Loire. The Royal Navy took Belle Poule into service under her existing name.
In April 1781, Nonsuch was part of Admiral George Darby's relief fleet during the Great Siege of Gibraltar. On 14 May 1781, on the homeward voyage, while scouting ahead, Nonsuch chased and brought to action the French 74-gun Actif, hoping to detain her until some others of the fleet came up. However, Actif was able to repulse Nonsuch, causing her to suffer 26 men killed and 64 wounded, and continued on to Brest.
Nonsuch was fourth in line attacking the French fleet at the Battle of the Saintes on 12 April 1782) under command of Captain Truscott.[9]
Late in 1782 Nonsuch and Zebra escorted a fleet from Georgia "with the principal inhabitants, their Negroes, and their Effects" to Jamaica.[10]
Floating battery Between February and May 1794 Nonsuch was at Chatham, being cut down and fitted as a floating battery. Captain Bill Douglas commissioned her in March. In June she was at Jersey under Captain Philippe d'Auvergne, Prince of Bouillon, and Senior Officer of Gunboats, in charge of a small flotilla of useless gunvessels, including Eagle, Lion, Repulse, Scorpion, and Tiger. (The Navy disposed of most of them within a year or so.) Nonsuch was paid off in December. In February 1795 Captain William Mitchell recommissioned her in the Humber at Hull as a floating battery.
Mitchell's successor, in August, was Captain Henry Blackwood. Nonsuch's logs state she arrived in the Humber at the end of June 1795, having sailed up from Chatham under Blackwood's command. By 2 July she was in a permanent mooring at Hull Roads.[3]
In April 1796 Captain Robert Dudley Oliver replaced Blackwood, only to be replaced in October 1797 by Captain Isaac Woolley, who commanded her until 1799.[2]
On 30 July 1797, the whalerBlenheim, William Mitchenson, master, arrived back at Hull from Davis Strait. As she arrived Nonsuch fired a shot to signal Blenheim to come to. Mitchenson ignored that signal, and several other shots. When Blenheim arrived at the port's haven, boats from Nonsuch, Redoubt, and Nautilus surrounded her. As the boats approached with the intent to board, Blenheim's crew pelted them with spears, capstan bars, handspikes, other offensive weapons, and also several large iron shot. The boats withdrew, but not before three men from Nonsuch were wounded, two mortally. Blenheim's crew got to shore and absconded. The government promised to pardon all of the members of the crew other than those that had actually murdered the two men from Nonsuch.[11] The reason the whalers resisted is that they wished to avoid impressment by the Royal Navy. The crew of out-bound merchantmen and whalers were generally exempt from the Press; the crew of returning vessels, however, were subject to impressment.
A fictitious 74 gun HMS Nonsuch is the flagship in Forester's "Commodore Hornblower". In his novel "Lord Hornblower", set at a later date, she is Captain Bush's ship and supports Hornblower when he takes Le Havre and acts as governor, until Napoleon is defeated at Waterloo.
Several vessels of the Royal Navy have been named HMS Nonsuch, presumably named after Nonsuch Palace:
Twelve ships of the Royal Navy have been named HMS Active or HMS Actif, with a thirteenth currently under construction:
Belle Poule was a French frigate of the Dédaigneuse class, designed by Léon-Michel Guignace. She is most famous for her duel with the British frigate HMS Arethusa on 17 June 1778, which began the French involvement in the American War of Independence.
HMS Blenheim was a 90-gun second-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, built by Israel Pownoll and launched on 5 July 1761 at Woolwich. In 1797 she participated in the Battle of Cape St Vincent. In 1801 Blenheim was razeed to a third rate. She disappeared off Madagascar with all hands in February 1807. Her fate remains a mystery.
HMS St Albans was a 64-gun third rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, launched on 12 September 1764 by Perry, Wells & Green at their Blackwall Yard, London.
HMS Bedford was a Royal Navy 74-gun third rate. This ship of the line was launched on 27 October 1775 at Woolwich.
Jean Bart may refer to one of the following ships of the French Navy or privateers named in honour of Jean Bart, a French naval commander and privateer.
The Foudroyant was an 80-gun ship of the line of the French Navy. She was later captured and served in the Royal Navy as the Third Rate HMS Foudroyant.
HMS Thames was a 32-gun Richmond-class fifth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy built by Henry Adams and launched at Bucklers Hard in 1758. She served in several wars, including for some four years in French service after her capture. She was recaptured in 1796 and was broken up in 1803.
America was a Téméraire-class 74-gun ship of the line of the French Navy. The Royal Navy captured her in 1794 at the Glorious First of June. She then served with the British under the name HMS Impetueux until she was broken up in 1813. She became the prototype for the Royal Navy America-class ship of the line.
HMS Belle Poule was a Royal Navy fifth-rate frigate, formerly Belle Poule, a Virginie-class frigate of the French Navy that had been built by the Crucy family's shipyard at Basse-Indre to a design by Jacques-Noël Sané. She was launched on 17 April 1802, and saw active service in the East. In 1806 a British squadron under Sir John Borlase Warren captured her off La Palma in the Canary Islands. The Admiralty commissioned her into the Royal Navy as HMS Belle Poule. She was sold in 1816.
HMS Ambuscade was a 32-gun fifth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy, built in the Grove Street shipyard of Adams & Barnard at Deptford in 1773. The French captured her in 1798 but the British recaptured her in 1803. She was broken up in 1810.
HMS Hinchinbrook was the French privateer Astrée, which the British captured in 1778 and took into the Royal Navy as a 28-gun sixth-rate frigate. She was Captain Horatio Nelson's second navy command, after the brig HMS Badger, and his first as post-captain. She was wrecked, with no loss of life, in January 1783.
The siege of Pondicherry was the first military action on the Indian subcontinent following the declaration of war between Great Britain and France in the American Revolutionary War. A British force besieged the French-controlled port of Pondicherry in August 1778, which capitulated after ten weeks of siege.
HMS Jupiter was a 50-gun Portland-class fourth-rate ship of the 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. She was also one of the fastest ships in the Royal Navy as shown by her attempt to capture the cutter Eclipse under Nathaniel Fanning.
Blenheim may have been launched in 1776 in Philadelphia as Britannia. By 1777 she was the Massachusetts-based privateer American Tartar and had taken several prizes. She had also participated in an inconclusive single-ship action with a British merchantman. The British Royal Navy captured American Tartar late in 1777 and she became HMS Hinchinbrook. The Royal Navy sold her in 1783 and she became the West Indiaman Blenheim. In 1785-86 she became a Greenland whaler and she continued in that trade until two French frigates captured and burnt her in 1806.
HMS Royalist was launched in 1807. She captured many privateers and letters of marque, most French, but also some from Denmark and the United States. Her crew twice were awarded the Naval General Service Medal. She was instrumental in the capture of a French frigate. The Royal Navy sold her in 1819. She then became a whaler, making three complete voyages. She was condemned after a mishap while on her fourth.
Triton was a 64-gun ship of the line of the French Navy designed by François Coulomb the Younger. She took part in the Seven Years' War and in the War of American Independence.
Actif was Citoyen-class 74-gun ship of the line of the French Navy.
HMS Redoubt was the mercantile Rover, which the Royal Navy purchased in March 1793 on the outbreak of war with France. The Navy fitted her as a floating battery. It sold her in 1802.
References
Demerliac, Alain (1996). La Marine de Louis XVI: Nomenclature des Navires Français de 1774 à 1792. Éditions Ancre.
Lavery, Brian (1983) The Ship of the Line – Volume 1: The development of the battlefleet 1650-1850. Conway Maritime Press. ISBN0-85177-252-8.
Winfield, Rif (2008). British Warships in the Age of Sail 1793–1817: Design, Construction, Careers and Fates. Seaforth. ISBN978-1861762467.
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