HMS Lion (1777)
HMS Lion
HMS Lion was a Thomas Slade designed Worcester Class, 64 gun, third rate ship of the line, built at Portsmouth Dockyard by M/shipwright Thomas Bucknell until the October of 1772 and completed by Edward Hunt. Ordered on the 12th of October 1768, and laid down in the May of 1769, she was launched on the 3rd of September 1777, and completed on the 7th of September, 1778.
History GREAT BRITAIN Name: HMS Lion Ordered: 12 October 1768 Builder: Portsmouth Dockyard Laid down: May 1769 Launched: 3 September 1777 Honours and
awards:Participated in:
Battle of GrenadaFate: Sold for breaking up, 30 November 1837 General characteristics Class and type: Worcester Class 64 gun ship of the line Tons burthen: 1378 (bm) Length: 159 ft (48 m) (gundeck) Beam: 44 ft 6 in (13.56 m) Depth of hold: 19 ft 10 in (6.05 m) Propulsion: Sails Sail plan: Full rigged ship Armament:
- Gundeck: 26 × 24-pounder guns
- Upper gundeck: 26 × 18-pounder guns
- QD: 10 × 4-pounder guns
- FC: 2 × 9-pounder guns
Service.
HMS Lion was commissioned in the May of 1778 and then sailed for the Americas.
The American Revolution.
She fought at the Battle of Grenada in Admiral John Byron’s fleet, under Captain William Cornwallis in the Rear squadron, on the 6th of July, 1779, where she was badly damaged and forced to run downwind to Jamaica. She remained on the Jamaican Station for the next year.
In the March of 1780, Lion fought an action in company with two other ships against a larger French force off Monte Christi on San Domingo. A second action took place in the June of 1780 near Bermuda when Cornwallis in Lion, with three other ships of the line and a fifty-gun ship, met a larger French squadron carrying the troops of General Rochambeau to North America. The French were too strong for Cornwallis's squadron, but were content to continue with their mission instead of attacking the smaller British force. Lion then returned to England, carrying with her Horatio Nelson, who was sick with malaria.
On her return to England she was decommissioned and then coppered at Portsmouth between the December of that year and the January of 1781, at a cost of £8,255.14.11d She was paid off in the August of 1783 following wartime service.In 1787 she underwent a middling repair at Portsmouth and then in the July of 1790 she was fitted and recommissioned for the Spanish Armament, but paid off again in the September of 1791.
Refitted at Portsmouth between the March and July of 1792 for £9460 she was recommissioned under Sir Erasmus Gower and on the 26th of September of that year sailed for China escorting the East Indiaman Hindostan, which carried the British ambassador Lord Macartney on his way to visit the Emperor of China with Lord Macartney’s Embassy. On their way they stopped at New Amsterdam Island or Ile Amsterdam. There they found a gang of seal fur hunters under the command of Pierre Francois Peron. Later, Lion captured the French ship Emélie, the vessel that had landed the sealers. Deprived of the ship that had landed them, Péron and his men spent some 40 months marooned on the island until Captain Thomas Hadley, in Ceres rescued them in late 1795 and took them to Port Jackson.
The French Revolutionary War.
Between 1792 and 1793 Lord George Macartney’s Embassy proceeded to the Bohai Gulf, off the Hai River The ambassador and his party were then conveyed up river by light craft to Tianjin before proceeding by land to Beijing. On reaching Tianjin, Macartney sent orders to Lion to proceed to Japan, but because of sickness among the crew she was unable to do so. The embassy rejoined Lion at Canton in the December of 1793. The ship's journal from this voyage is in the library of Cornell University.
HMS Lion under sail, 1794.
On her return to England following the Embassy Lion was paid off in the October of that year at Chatham and immediately underwent a refit which was completed in the May of 1795. She was recommissioned under Captain George Palmer for service in the North Sea. And later came under the command of Captain Henry Inman.
In 1796,under Captain Edmund Crawley she visited Cape Town; but in 1797, her crew were among those who joined the Mutiny at the Nore. In the July of that year she was put under the command of Captain Charles Cobb and then In the September of 1798, under the command of Sir Manley Dixon., Lion sailed for the Medon the 2nd of June in that year and fought a squadron of Spanish 34 gun frigates, comprising the Santa Cazilda, Pomona, Proserpine, and Santa Dorothea, in the Action on the 15th of July, in the process Lion captured the Santa Dorothea.
Capture of the Dorothea, 15 July 1798 (HMS Lion is at centre right), Thomas Whitcombe, 1816
She then proceeded to take part in the blockade of Malta where with the aid of HMS Penelope and HMS Foudroyant she captured the French 80 gun ship Le Guillaume Tell as it attempted to escape the blockade. During the action Lion lost a total of 8 killed and 38 wounded. Guillaume Tell was subsequently bought into the Royal Navy as HMS Malta.
The Disabled situation of the Guillaume Tel of 84 Guns... as she appeared at Daylight on the 30th March 1800, after having been Engaged by His Majesty's Ship Penelope... the Stromboli Brig, Lion & Foudroyant coming up, by the two latter of which ships she was afterwards engaged
In the May of 1800 she came under the captaincy of Lord William Stuart, and then in the July of that year Captain George Hammond, before being paid off in the November of that year. She then had a refit at Chatham between the February and May of 1801 at a cost of £13,545.She was then recommissioned under Captain Henry Mitford, and sailed for the East Indies on the 20th of May. By 1804 she was back in England and undergoing more repairs at John Dudman’s Deptford yard from the 12th of December of that year until the December of 1805 at a cost of £58,124. She then completed her fitting out there at a further cost of £15,509 completed in the January of 1806. Meanwhile being recommissioned in the previous month under Captain Robert Rolles. She sailed once again for the East Indies in the May of that year, and in the July of 1807, in the Straits of Malacca she successfully protected a convoy homeward bound from China from the French frigate Semillante, without the need to engage her.
Homeward bound, on the 27th of December in that year, Lion captured the French privateer Lugger La Reciprocité off Beachy Head. The Frencc ship was from Dieppe, had a crew of 45 men, and was armed with 14 guns. Lion then dispatched her to the Downs under a Prize crew.
In the February of 1808 she came under Captain Henry Heathcoat, who would command her until the end of 1811, and she set sail for China on the 5th of March 1808. In the July of 1811, Lion was one of a large fleet of ships involved in the capture of Java from Dutch forces.
On the 26th of January,1812 Commander Henderson Bain of the Harpy became acting captain of Lion. which became the Flagship of Vice Admiral Robert Stopford at the Cape of Good Hope. Later in the year Lion was transferred to becoming the Flagship of Rear Admiral Charles Tyler. Bain returned to command of Harpy a few weeks before he received promotion to Post Captain on the 6th of April, 1813. Captaincy of Lion now underwent a rapid succession of commanders, commencing with Captain James Johnstone, and then George Douglas, Henderson Bain, and finally John Eveleigh.
Fate.
Lion was converted to a sheer hulk, for service at Plymouth in the August of 1814 and then at Sheerness, in the September of 1816, following the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars.
Lion was eventually sold to John Levy and Son of Chatham for £2,300, to be broken up on the 30th of November, 1837.
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