HMS Confiance

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

HMS Confiance was a 36 gun frigate that served in the Royal Navy on Lake Champlain.

She was the largest warship ever constructed at Ile aux Noix Naval Shipyards and was built in answer to the American commander Thomas Macdonough's ambitious shipbuilding program, itself designed to thwart British advances into Vermont and New York during the War of 1812.

Confiance served as Captain George Downie's flagship at the Battle of Plattsburg, on September 11, 1814 and was forced to strike after a two-hour battle with Macdonough's Saratoga, during which she sustained at least 105 hits by round shot. Forty of her crew were killed, including Downie, and another eighty-three wounded.

Taken into the U.S. Navy at Whitehall, New York in 1815, she was never fitted and she was eventually sold out of the Navy about 1825.

[edit] Technical Data

Tonnage: Approximately 1,200 tons

Armament: 30 24-pdrs., 6 32-pdr. carronades, 1 24-pdr. (on pivot mount)

[edit] References

• War of 1812 Shipwrecks
• "The Naval War of 1812", Theodore Roosevelt