HMS Lancaster (1797)
HMS Lancaster was a 64 gun third rate ship of the line built by Randall & Co. at Rotherhithe. Launched on 29th of January,1797, she was completed between the 13th of February and the 17th of April in that year at Deptford Dockyard. The total cost of building including coppering being £29,659. plus £9,132. for fitting.
She was designed and built as the East Indiaman Pigot for the Honourable East India Company, but the Navy purchased her on the stocks because of a shortage of naval vessels to prosecute the French Revolutionary Wars.
Royal Naval plan of Lancaster
History GREAT BRITAIN Name: Pigot Builder: Randall and Brent, Rotherhithe Launched: 29 January 1797 Renamed: HMS Lancaster Fate: Sold, 1832
General characteristicsClass and type: 64 gun third rate ship of the line Tons burthen: 1429 (bm) Length: 173 ft 6 in (52.88 m) (gundeck) Beam: 43 ft 2 in (13.18 m) Depth of hold: 19 ft 9 in (6.02 m) Propulsion: Sails Sail plan: Full rigged ship Armament: 64 guns of various weights of shot
Service.
HMS Lancaster was commissioned by Captain John Wells in the February of 1797.She was involved in the Nore Mutiny at Gravesend, but had been restored to duty by the 6th of June in the same year. On the 11th of October of that year she took her place in the Weather column at the Battle of Camperdown. During the action she suffered 3 killed and 18 wounded.
In 1798 she served on the Irish station, and in 1799 she returned to port for a refit during the April and May of the year. The cost was £9,021.
She was then recommissioned under Captain Thomas Larcom who died in the April of 1804.
Under him she served as the flagship of Vice Admiral Sir Roger Curtis and sailed for the Cape of Good Hope and then onward to the East Indies. In the July of 1800 Lancaster, Adamant, Euphrosyne, and Rattlesnake were dispatched by dispatched by Admiral Curtis to create a blockade at the Iles de France and Bourbon, which duty they carried out until the October of that year, and during this time they took the following ships:-
In August, they took the Spanish or possibly French ship Edouard, carrying wine and brandy to the Isle de France from the port of Bordeaux. Later in the month came the French Brig Paquebot with a cargo of wine and a variety of other commodities originating on the Indian sub continent.
Also in August they captured a Spanish Brig sailing from Montevideo to the Isle de France carrying a consignment of soap, tallow and other sundry goods.
In September they intercepted the French Brig Mouche conveying a portion of the cargo from the Brig Uranie which had been wrecked some time earlier.
Between 1805 and 1807 Lancaster came under the captaincy of Captain William Fothergill and returned to the Cape from where on the 29th of August, 1806, she sailed from her anchorage in Simon’s Bay as part of Stirling’s squadron escorting several transports, forming part of the second of the British invasion forces involved in the River Plate fiasco.
On her return to England in 1807 she was fitted as a receiving ship at Chatham between the August and September of that year intending to dispatch her to Malta in that role. However, in October she went into Ordinary and then fitted as a victualler still at Chatham from between the October and end of 1808. She then moved to Plymouth in 1812, and Sheerness from 1813 to 1815.
Fate.
On the 11th of March, 1815, the Navy loaned Lancaster to The West India Dock Company as a Boys’ Training ship. She was returned to the Admiralty on the 2nd of January, 1832 and shortly after this The Principle Officers and Commissioners of His Majesty's Navy offered her for sale at Woolwich on the 30th of May in that year. She was sold on the same day for the sum of £2,410 to Joshua Crystall & Co.of London, to be broken up.
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