Third Rate 64 gun ships of the Royal Navy.

[Bligh]

HMS Monmouth (1796)

HMS Monmouth was a 64 gun third rate ship of the line, built by Randall& Co. at Rotherhithe. Belmont was registered and named Monmouth on the 14th of July, 1795 and was launched on the 23rd of April, 1796, being completed at Deptford Dockyard by the 31st of October in that same year. Monmouth was designed and laid down for the Honourable East India Company under the name of Belmont, but the Navy purchased her after the start of the French Revolutionary wars.






Original EIC Ship plan for the Monmouth 1796

GREAT BRITAIN
Name:	HMS Monmouth
Builder:	Randall & Co, Rotherhithe
Launched:	23 April 1796
Completed:	31 October 1796
Acquired:	14 July 1795
Honours and awards:	Naval General Service Medal with clasps: "Camperdown" "Egypt"
Fate:	Broken up in May 1834
General characteristics
Class and type:	64 gun third rate ship of the line
Tons burthen:	1,439​ 51⁄94 (bm)
Length:	173 ft 1 in (52.8 m) (overall) 144 ft 1 1⁄2 in (43.9 m) (keel)
Beam:	43 ft 4 in (13.2 m)
Depth of hold: Draught:	19 ft 8 in (6.0 m) 10 ft 7 in / 15 ft 9 in
Propulsion:	Sails
Sail plan:	Full rigged ship
Complement:	491
Armament:	Lower deck: 26 x 24 pdr guns Upper deck: 26 x 18 pdr guns QD: 10 x 9 pdr guns Fc: 2 x 9 pdr guns

Service.

HMS Monmouth was commissioned in the September of 1796 under Captain Lord William Carnegie Earl of Northesk.

The French Revolutionary Wars.

She was initially assigned to serve in the North Sea, and in the May of 1797 was one of the ships involved in the Mutiny at the Nore. The crew took her first lieutenant Charles Bullen prisoner, and threatened to execute him. Northesk intervened and Bullen was able to carry messages ashore from the crew. These are reputed to have helped in ending the mutiny. After the mutiny Northesk resigned his commission. Order was restored in a matter of weeks, and Monmouth was placed under Commander James Walker., in an acting captaincy. Walker had been planning to attack the mutinous ships at anchor with a squadron of gunboats only a few weeks previously.
I n 1797, Walker commanded Monmouth in the Lee column at the Battle of Camperdown on the 11th of October when Admiral Adam Duncan led the British Fleet against the Dutch.

Before the battle Walker had addressed the crew, saying:

"Now, my lads, you see your enemy before you. I shall lay you close on board, and thus give you an opportunity of washing the stain off your characters with the blood of your foes. Go to your quarters, and do your duty."
Monmouth was engaged in heavy combat with the Dutch ships Alkmaar and the Delft, capturing both vessels, although Delft later sank. During the action Monmouth suffered five men killed and 22 wounded. In 1847 the Admiralty awarded the Naval General Service Medal with clasp "Camperdown" to all surviving claimants from the action.

During the February of 1798 Monmouth underwent repairs as a consequence of the battle at a cost of £4,577. She was then recommissioned in the following month and Robert Deans became her new captain. Monmouth was among the seven vessels of Lord Duncan's fleet that shared in the prize money for the privateer Jupiter, captured on the 27th of April in that year.

In January 1799 Vice-Admiral Archibald Dickson raised his flag in her, but she then went into Sheerness in March for repairs costing £4,873.In April command passed to Captain George Hart, who retained the post until 1805. Monmouth was among the vessels sharing in the prize money from sundry Dutch doggers, schuyts, and fishing vessels, taken in April and May of that year. She was also part of a squadron that on the 12th of May captured Roose, Genet, next Polly, American, Forsigtigheid, and Bergen, two days later, Des Finch on the 21st, and Vrow Dorothea on the 30th.

That August, Monmouth took part in the Helder operation, a joint Anglo-Russian invasion of Holland under the command of Vice-AdmiralAndrew Mitchell. At the Neiuw Diep the British captured seven warships and 13 Dutch East Indiamen along with several transports. Mitchell then contrived the surrender of a squadron of the Batavian Navy in the Vlieter Incident. The Dutch surrendered twelve vessels ranging down in size from the 74 gun Washington to the 16 gun Brig Galathea. Following this feat majeure, on the 17th of August, Monmouth was among the vessels sharing in the capture of Adelarde, and on the 15th of September, in concert with several other British vessels and two Russians, to high acclaim, she arrived at Sheerness as escort to five captured Dutch ships of the line, three frigates and one sloop.

Monmouth sailed for the Mediterranean in the June of 1801. She therefore came to share in the proceeds of the capture of Almas di Purgatoria off Alexandria on the 28th of July in that year. Because Monmouth served in the navy's Egyptian campaign (8 March to 8 September 1801), her officers and crew qualified for the clasp "Egypt" to the Naval General Service Medal that the Admiralty authorised for all surviving claimants in 1850.

The Napoleonic Wars.

In 1803 Monmouth, still under Hart's command, was at Gibraltar. There Hart received the report from Captain John Gore of the Medusa about his taking of Esperance, a French privateer’s Felucca, off the Straits of Gibraltar, and also of the destruction of another, the Sorcier. By the July of that year, Monmouth had joined the Mediterranean squadron blockading Toulon.

Following Monmouth’s return to home waters in 1804, and after his promotion to Rear Admiral in the April of the year, Thomas McNamara Russell adopted Monmouth as his Flagship for service in the North Sea.
Monmouth was recommissioned again in the March of 1807 under Captain Edward Durnford King, and on the 7th of September in that year she became the Flagship of Rear-Admiral William O’Bryen Drury, and then on the 15th of that month she sailed as escort to a convoy of nine East Indiamen for the Indian sub continent. Seven of the ships were bound for the coast, and two further vessels for Bombay.. The vessels being escorted included the Ann, Diana, Glory, Northampton, Sarah Christiana, Sir William Pulteney, and Union.

During the voyage, on the 25th of January, 1808 Monmouth took the Danish ship Nancy. Following this, on the 12th of February, she arrived off the Danish possession of Tranquebar in time to witness the !4th Regiment of Foot and the HEIC's artillery being disembarked by the Russell. The British marched to capture the settlement and the adjacent fort, both of which capitulated without a show of resistance. Monmouth returned to Britain in the September of that year, having escorted another convoy of Indiamen. Shortly after her arrival she was paid off on the 24th of that month.

By the August of 1809, Monmouth was involved in the Walcheren Expedition, the objective of which was to destroy the dockyards and arsenals of Antwerp, Flushing, and Terneuzen.By the end of the month, Admiral Sir Richard Strachan had ordered her return to England for watering and inn the October of that same year she was fitted and recommissioned as a victualing ship under Commander Michael Dod, for service in the Downs.

Dod’s successor on the 7th of November, 1810 was Captain Francis Beauman. At the time Monmouth was destined to become the flagship of Vice-Admiral George Campbell, Commander-in-Chief of the Downs station. In the April of 1811 Captain Hyde Parker took command of Monmouth, and later in the year she came under Captain William Nowell until 1813.His successor was Captain William Wilkinson. Throughout this period she served, in addition to still being a victualler, as the flagship to Vice-Admiral Thomas Foley, Campbell's successor. Monmouth received payment for smuggled goods which had been seized on the 1sat of March, 1814.

Fate.

Monmouth was laid up in ordinary at Woolwich in 1815. In the June of 1815 she then was hulked at Deptford, becoming a sheer hulk at Woolwich from 1828 th 1833. She was broken up at Deptford in the May of 1834.Despite this she still appeared on the Navy Lists for several more years.