HMS Resource (1778)

For other ships with the same name, see HMS Resource.
History
Great Britain
Name: HMS Resource
Ordered: 30 September 1777
Builder: John Randall & Co, Rotherhithe
Laid down: November 1777
Launched: 10 August 1778
Completed: 2 October 1778 (at Deptford Dockyard)
Commissioned: July 1778
Renamed: Enterprise 17 April 1806
Honours and
awards:		 Naval General Service Medal with clasp "Egypt"[1]
Fate: Sold to break up 28 August 1816
General characteristics
Class and type: 28-gun Enterprise-class sixth-rate frigate
Tons burthen: 603  34⁄94 (bm)
Length:
  • 120 ft 8 in (36.78 m) (overall)
  • 99 ft 7 in (30.35 m) (keel)
Beam: 33 ft 9 in (10.3 m)
Depth of hold: 11 ft 0 1⁄2 in (3.366 m)
Sail plan: Full-rigged ship
Complement: 200 officers and men
Armament:
  • Upper deck: 24 ×  9-pounder guns
  • QD: 4 x  6-pounder guns + 4 x  18-pounder carronades
  • Fc: 2 x  18-pounder carronades
  • Also: 12 x  swivel guns

HMS Resource was a 28-gun Enterprise-class sixth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy. She was launched in 1778 and sold for breaking up in 1816.

Career

Resource was first commissioned in July 1778 under the command of Captain Patrick Fotheringham.

On 19 April 1781 Resource recaptured the 20-gun post ship Unicorn, which the French frigate Andromaque had captured on 4 September 1780. Resource had reached Cape Blaise by noon and at 2pm spotted a strange sail. By 4:30 Resource was close enough that both vessels began to exchange fire. After an hour and a half, the French vessel struck. She turned out to be Unicorn, and armed with twenty 9-pounder guns and eight 12-pounder carronades. She had a crew of 181 men under the command of Chevalier de St. Ture. In the engagement, Resource lost 15 men killed and 30 wounded; Unicorn lost eight men killed and 30 wounded, four of whom died later.[2]

Ten crew members were drowned in October 1799 when the ship's boat foundered in The Downs while returning to Resource after a journey to the shore. The dead included the captain of marines and the ship's purser.[3]

Because Resource served in the navy's Egyptian campaign (8 March to 2 September 1801), her officers and crew qualified for the clasp "Egypt" to the Naval General Service Medal that the Admiralty authorised in 1850 for all surviving claimants.[Note 1]

Notes and citations

Notes
  1. ↑ A first-class share of the prize money awarded in April 1823 was worth £34 2s 4d; a fifth-class share, that of a seaman, was worth 3s 11½d. The amount was small as the total had to be shared between 79 vessels and the entire army contingent.[4]
Citations
  1. ↑ The London Gazette: no. 21077. pp. 791–792. 15 March 1850.
  2. ↑ The London Gazette: no. 12212. p. 5. 31 July 1781.
  3. ↑ Grocott 1997, p.79
  4. ↑ The London Gazette: no. 17915. p. 633. 3 April 1823.

References


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