HMS Magnificent (1766)
HMS Magnificent was a Ramillies-class 74-gun third-rate ship of the line Designed by Sir Thomas Slade. She was ordered on the 16th of December, 1761, M/shipwright Adam Hayes, and was launched on the 20th of September, 1766 at Deptford Dockyard. She was one of the ships built to update the Navy and replace those lost in the Seven Years' War.
GREAT BRITAIN Name: HMS Magnificent Ordered: 16 December 1761 Builder: Deptford Dockyard Laid down: 15 April 1762 Launched: 20 September 1766 Commissioned: July 1778 Fate: Wrecked off Brest, 25 March 1804 Notes: ·Participated in:
·Battle of Grenada
·Battle of Martinique
·Battle of the SaintesClass and type: Ramillies-classship of the line Tons burthen: 161264⁄94 (bm) Length: 168 ft 6 in (51.36 m) (gundeck) Beam: 46 ft 9 in (14.25 m) Depth of hold: 19 ft 9 in (6.02 m) Propulsion: Sails Sail plan: Full rigged ship Armament: ·Gundeck: 28 × 32-pounder guns
·Upper gundeck: 28 × 18-pounder guns
·QD: 14 × 9-pounder guns
·Fc: 4 × 9-pounder guns
On completion she was laid up at Sheerness on the 22nd of September 1766. It was not until after small repairs between the February of 1772 and the November of 1774 that she was finally fitted for sea in the September of 1778.
On 21 December 1779, HMS Magnificent with the 74-gun ships HMS Suffolk and HMS Vengeance, and the 64-gun HMS Stirling Castle under Rear-Admiral Joshua Rowley, fell in with the 32-gun French frigates Fortunee and Blanche and the 28-gun Elise, when off Guadeloupe. The French ships were in bad order; their crews were excessively weak; and thus they could not escape the vastly superior British force. The Blanche was overtaken and captured on the evening of the 21st; the Fortunes, by throwing her quarter-deck guns overboard, kept away a little longer, but was captured at last in the early morning of 22 December, an hour before the Elise.
Magnificent ‘s war service in the American Revolution was conducted with Admiral Rodney’s fleet in the Caribbean, where under Captain John Elphinstone she served in the vanguard at battle off Grenada in 1779. Martinique on the 17th of April1780, and The Saintes under Captain Robert Linzee between the 9th and 11th of April, 1782, where she suffered six killed and eleven wounded.
Paid off again in 1783 after wartime service, she was coppered and fitted at Portsmouth between the October of 1784 and April of 1785. Recommissioned in the June of 1787 under Captain George Berkeley, she was designated as a guardship at Portsmouth. She then passed to the command of Captain Richard Onslow at Weymouth between the July and August of 1789. Paid off in 1791 she was sent to Chatham for repairs in 1794 which were completed in the July of 1795. Recommissioned in the June of that year under Captain Matthew Squire for Channel service, she was paid off once more in the March of 1796 for a middling repair.
The Napoleonic Wars.
From the August of 1798 Magnificent was under Captain Edward Bowater. Magnificent ‘s duties mainly consisted of blockade work off the French coast, because at Plymouth between the March of 1796 and the October of 1798, the ship had received a complete overhaul designed to extend her service life and improve her ability at performing these close blockade duties.
After a recommission in the July of 1799 under Captain Peter Bover, in the March of 1801, Magnificent next came under the command of Captain John Giffard upon his transfer from HMS Active. Early in 1802, she sailed for the Leeward Islands, arriving at the time of the 8th West India Regiment revolt in Dominica where they had killed three officers, imprisoned the others and taken over Fort Shirley. On the day following, HMS Magnificent, which was anchored in Prince Rupert's Bay sent a party of marines ashore to restore order. The mutineers fired upon the Magnificent with no effect. On the 12th of April, Governor Cochrane entered Fort Shirley with the Royal Scots Regiment and the 68th Regiment of Foot. The rebels were drawn up on the Upper Battery of Fort Shirley with three of their officers as prisoners and presented arms to the other troops. They obeyed Cochrane's command to ground their arms but refused his order to step forward. The mutineers picked up their arms and fired a volley. Shots were returned, followed by a bayonet charge that broke their ranks and a close range fire fight ensued. Those mutineers who tried to escape over the precipice to the sea were exposed to grape-shot and canister fire from Magnificent. The 74-gunExcellent, the frigate Severn, and the sloop Gaiete assisted Magnificent, also supplying marines.
At the close of that year she returned to Portsmouth, and was recommissioned in the May of 1803 under Captain William Ricketts Jervis.
On the morning of 25 March 1804, during her duties blockading the French port of Brest, commanded by Captain Jervis, Magnificent, struck an uncharted reef close to the Black Rocks that bordered the port and rapidly began to founder.
Loss of the Magnificent by John Christian Schetky
The rest of the blockading squadron closed on her and rescued the majority of her crew, the remainder taking to the boats as the ship went down, only one and a half hours after hitting the reef, at about 10.30am. Although the whole crew survived, one boat carrying 86 men became separated from the rest and was driven ashore by the prevailing wind and tide, where the men were taken prisoner and remained captives of the French for almost a decade.
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