HMS Invincible (1765)
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HMS Invincible, built in 1765, was a long service, 1,631 ton, third rate ship of the line in the British Royal Navy.
Invincible was built in a shipyard in the Thames River near London in 1765 during a period of peace to replace ships worn out in the recently finished Seven Years' War. The ship went on to serve in the American War of Independence, fighting at the battles of Cape St Vincent in 1780, The Chesapeake in 1781 and St Kitts in 1782.
She survived the cull of the Navy during the next period of peace, and was present at the Glorious First of June in 1793, where she was badly damaged and lost fourteen men, and the capture of Trinidad from the Spanish in 1797.
On 16 March 1801, she was lost in a shipwreck off the Norfolk Coast. She had been sailing from Yarmouth under the flag of Rear-Admiral Thomas Totty in an effort to reach the fleet of Admiral Sir Hyde Parker in the Sound preparing for the upcoming attack on the Danish fleet, with approximately 650 people on board. As the ship passed the Norfolk coast, she was caught in heavy wind and stuck on the Hammonds Knoll Rock, where she was pinned for some hours in the afternoon before breaking free but immediately being grounded on a sandbank, where the effect of wind and waves tore down the masts and began to break the ship up. She remained in that position for all the following day, but late in the evening drifted off the sandbank and sank in deep water.
The admiral and 195 sailors escaped the wreck, either in one of the ship's boats which got away or were picked up by a passing collier and fishing boat, but over 400 of their shipmates drowned in the disaster, most of them once the ship began to sink in deeper water.
The compulsory court martial investigating the incident, held on HMS Ruby in Sheerness, absolved the admiral and the captain (posthumously) of culpability in the disaster, posthumously blaming the harbour pilot and the ship's master, both of whom had been engaged to steer the ship through the reefs and shoals of the dangerous region, and should have known the location of Hammond's Knoll, especially since it was daytime and in sight of land.
For other ships of the same name, see HMS Invincible.
[edit] References
- Grocott, Terence, Shipwrecks of the Revolutionary & Napoleonic Eras, Caxton Editions, Great Britain: 2002. ISBN 1-84067-164-5.
- Ships of the Old Navy entry
