Drake class sloop

Class overview
Operators:	Royal Navy
Preceded by:	Bonetta group
Succeeded by:	Wolf class
Built:	1740-1741
In commission:	1741-1756
Completed:	3
Lost:	2
General characteristics (common design)
Type:	Sloop-of-war
Tons burthen:	201 66⁄94 bm
Length:	85 ft 0 in (25.9 m) (gundeck) 68 ft 8 in (20.9 m) (keel)
Beam:	23 ft 6 in (7.2 m)
Depth of hold:	9 ft 6 in (2.90 m) (vessels without platform in hold)
Sail plan:	Snow
Complement:	80 (100 from 1744)
Armament:	8 (later 10) × 4-pounder guns; also 14 x ½-pounder swivel guns

The Drake class was a class of three sloops of wooden construction built for the Royal Navy during 1741. All were ordered in 1740, and were the first to be built by contract with commercial builders, although they were to a common design prepared by Jacob Allin, the Surveyor of the Navy. They were the first new sloops to be built since the previous batch of eight in 1732 (which had all been built in the Royal Dockyards), but they closely followed the characteristics of their predecessors.

Although initially armed with eight 4-pounder guns, this class was built with seven pairs of gunports on the upper deck (each port flanked by two pairs of row-ports), and the two survivors in 1744 had their ordnance increased to ten guns.

Vessels

• Drake - wrecked 1742.
• Hawk - taken to pieces 1747.
• Swift - lost 1756.

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. 
• McLaughlan, Ian. The Sloop of War 1650-1763. Seaforth Publishing, 2014. ISBN 978-1-84832-187-8.
• Winfield, Rif. British Warships in the Age of Sail 1714-1792: Design, Construction, Careers and Fates. Seaforth Publishing, 2007. ISBN 978-1-84415-700-6.