HMS Winchelsea (1764)

History
Great Britain
Name:	HMS Winchelsea
Ordered:	11 August 1761
Builder:	Sheerness Dockyard
Laid down:	29 March 1762
Launched:	31 May 1764
Commissioned:	February 1769
Honours and awards:	Naval General Service Medal with clasp "Egypt"[1]
Fate:	Sold to be broken up November 1814
General characteristics
Class & type:	Niger-class fifth-rate frigate
Tons burthen:	679.7 bm
Length:	125 ft (38 m)
Beam:	35 ft 2 in (10.72 m)
Depth of hold:	12 ft (3.7 m)
Sail plan:	Full-rigged ship
Complement:	220
Armament:	Upperdeck: 26 ×  12-pounder guns QD: 4 ×  6-pounder guns Fc: 2 ×  6-pounder guns 12 ×  ½-pounder swivels

HMS Winchelsea was a 32-gun fifth-rate Niger-class frigate of the Royal Navy, and was the sixth Royal Navy ship to bear this name (or its archaic form Winchelsey). She was ordered during the Seven Years' War, but completed too late for that conflict. She cost £11,515-18-0d to build.

Career

HMS Winchelsea was brought into service in February 1769, under Captain Samuel Goodall and sailed for service to the Mediterranean.^[2] In December 1769 she struck rocks off Cádiz, Spain and was severely damaged. Refloated, she was taken in to Gibraltar for repairs.^[3] Command was passed to Captain Thomas Wilkinson in June 1771 with the ship remaining at her Mediterranean station.^[2]

In June 1775 she was paid off and returned to Sheerness Dockyard to be placed in ordinary.^[2]

She saw later service during the American War of Independence and thereafter until 1794, and was refitted as a troop ship at Portsmouth Dockyard in 1799-1800.^[2] Because Winchelsea 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]}

Fate

She became a convalescent ship at Sheerness in 1803, finally being sold there to be broken up in November 1814.

Notes, citations, and references

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 an able 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. Winfield 2007, pp. 197-98
3. "(untitled)". Lloyd's List (3544). 16 January 1770.
4. The London Gazette: no. 17915. p. 633. 3 April 1823.

References

• Colledge, J. J.; Warlow, Ben (2006) [1969]. Ships of the Royal Navy: The Complete Record of all Fighting Ships of the Royal Navy (Rev. ed.). London: Chatham Publishing. ISBN 978-1-86176-281-8. OCLC 67375475.
• Lavery, Brian (2003) The Ship of the Line — Volume 1: The development of the battlefleet 1650–1850. Conway Maritime Press. ISBN 0-85177-252-8.
• Winfield, Rif (2007) British Warships in the Age of Sail, 1714-1792. Seaforth Publishing. ISBN 978-1-84415-700-6.