HMS Victory (1737)

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Career (UK)

Name:	HMS Victory
Builder:	Portsmouth Dockyard
Laid down:	1726
Launched:	23 February 1737
Fate:	Wrecked 5 October 1744
General characteristics
Class and type:	first rate ship of the line
Tons burthen:	1,921 tons
Length:	174 ft 8 in (53.2 m) gun deck
Beam:	50 ft 5 in (15.4 m)
Draught:	18 ft (5.5 m)
Sail plan:	Full rigged ship
Complement:	Around 900
Armament:	4 x 6 pounders (2.7 kg) on the forecastle 12 x 6 pounders (2.7 kg) on the quarter-deck 28 x 12 pounders (5 kg) on the upper deck 28 x 24 pounders (11 kg) on the middle deck 28 x 42 pounders (19 kg) on the main gun deck

For the museum ship at Portsmouth on which Admiral Nelson was killed during the Battle of Trafalgar, see HMS Victory.

For other ships of the same name, see HMS Victory (disambiguation).

HMS Victory, 100, was a first-rate ship of the line of Britain's Royal Navy.

Some few of the timbers used were taken from the remains of the previous HMS Victory which had caught fire and mostly burnt in February 1721 whilst having weed burned from her bottom (this process was called "breaming").

The new Victory was launched in 1737 and became the flagship of the Channel Fleet under Sir John Norris in 1741. She was the last British First Rate to be armed entirely with brass cannon.

She was wrecked with the loss of her entire crew whilst returning to England as the flagship of Admiral Sir John Balchen after relieving Sir Charles Hardy, who had been blockaded in the Tagus estuary. As the fleet reached the English Channel on 3 October 1744 it was scattered by a large storm. At around 15:30 on 4 October the ships accompanying Victory lost sight of her near to the Channel Islands. She is believed to have been wrecked the following day on Black Rock just off the Casquets, with the loss of her entire complement.

Frigates were dispatched across the English Channel to search for the missing battleship, last seen wallowing on the horizon on the 4 October. Eventually, Captain Thomas Grenville of the frigate HMS Falkland landed at Guernsey in the Channel Islands to reprovision and there heard from locals that wreckage and part of a topmast had washed up on the island's shores. Further investigation proved that the wreckage had indeed come from the Victory, which was believed to have run into the Casquets, a group of rocks nearby. Other wreckage was washed up on Jersey and Alderney, whose inhabitants had heard distress guns the night before the wreck but were unable to provide aid in the severe storm. Of the 1,150 sailors aboard Victory, no trace was ever discovered.

Her wreck has not yet been located.