Third Rate ships of 74 guns.

[Bligh]

HMS Invincible (1765)

HMS Invincible was a 74-gun Ramillies class third-rate ship of the line, ordered on the 12^th of October 1761and built by John and William Wells and company at Deptford. She was launched on the 9^th of March,1765.

Ramillies Class /Invincible
History.
GREAT BRITAIN
Name:	HMS Invincible
Ordered:	12th of October 1761
Builder:	Wells, Deptford
Launched:	9 March 1765
Fate:	Wrecked, 16 March 1801
Notes:	Participated in: Battle of Cape St. Vincent Battle of the Chesapeake Battle of St. Kitts Glorious First of June
General characteristics
Class and type:	Ramillies-class ship of the line
Tons burthen:	1630
Length:	168 ft 6 in (51.36 m) (gundeck)
Beam:	47 ft 3 in (14.30 m)
Depth of hold:	19 ft 9 in (6.02 m)
Propulsion:	Sails
Sail plan:	Full rigged ship
Armament:	74 guns: Gundeck: 28 × 32 pdrs Upper gundeck: 28 × 18 pdrs Quarterdeck: 14 × 9 pdrs Forecastle: 4 × 9 pdrs

Built during a period of peace to replace ships worn out in the recently concluded Seven Years' War, Invincible was first sent to Sheerness on the 6^th of April 1765, before being commissioned in the November of 1766, under Captain Hyde Parker, and thence to Portsmouth for coppering between the April and May of 1779. Recommissioned under Captain Anthony Parry, she was dispatched to serve in the American War of Independence, under Captain John Laforey, fighting at the battles of Cape St Vincent on the 16^th of January,1780 under Captain S Cornish, with a total of three killed and four wounded.

Richard Bickerton became her captain at the start of 1781, and then under the command of Captain Charles Saxton, the Battles of the Chesapeake on the 5^th of September of that year, with no casualties, Then at the battle of St. Kitts in the January of,1782, still under Saxton she suffered only two wounded.


Battle of St. Kitts 1782

On her return to Plymouth she went into ordinary in the February of 1784. And in the November of 1788 underwent a large repair at Chatham.

She survived the cull of the Navy during the next period of peace, and was recommissioned under Captain Thomas Pakenham in the May of 1793 for service in Howe’s Fleet. She was present, still under Pakenham’s command, at the battle of the Glorious First of June off Ushant on the first of June,1794, where she was badly damaged and lost fourteen men killed and thirty one wounded, and then, under the command of William Cayley, went on to the Invasion of Trinidad in (1797), which resulted in the transfer of Trinidad from Spain to Great Britain.

Shipwreck.



The loss of HMS Invincible

In the February of 1801 she was appointed a new captain, one John Rennie. On the 16^th of March of that year, she was lost in a shipwreck off the coast of Norfolk, England. She had been sailing from Yarmouth under the flag of Rear-Admiral Thomas Totty in an effort to reach the fleet of Admiral Sir Hyde Parker in the Sound preparing for the upcoming attack on the Danish fleet, with approximately 650 people on board. As the ship passed the Norfolk coast, she was caught in heavy wind and stuck on the Hammond Knoll Rock off Happisburgh, where she was pinned for some hours in the afternoon before breaking free but immediately being grounded on a sandbank, where the effect of wind and waves tore down the masts and began to break up the ship. She remained in that position for all of the following day, but late in the evening drifted off the sandbank and sank in deep water.

The admiral and 195 sailors escaped the wreck, either in one of the ship's boats or were picked up by a passing collier and fishing boat, but over 400 of their shipmates drowned in the disaster, most of them once the ship began to sink into the deeper water.
The compulsory court martial investigating the incident, held on Ruby in Sheerness, absolved the admiral and the captain, posthumously, of any culpability in the disaster, blaming the harbour pilot and the ship's master, both of whom had been engaged to steer the ship through the reefs and shoals of the dangerous region, and should have known the location of Hammond Knoll, especially since it was daytime and in sight of land.

The remains of many of her crew were located by chance in a mass grave in Happisburgh churchyard during the digging of a new drainage channel. A memorial stone was erected in 1998 to their memory by the Ship's Company of the Royal Navy aircraft carrier HMS Invincible, and by the Happisburgh parochial church council.