HMS York (1796)

Career (UK)
Name:	HMS York
Builder:	Barnard, Deptford
Launched:	24 March 1796
Fate:	Wrecked, 1804
General characteristics
Class and type:	64-gun third rate ship of the line
Tons burthen:	1433 bm
Length:	174 ft 3 in (53.11 m) (gundeck)
Beam:	43 ft 2 in (13.16 m)
Depth of hold:	19 ft 7 in (5.97 m)
Propulsion:	Sails
Sail plan:	Full rigged ship
Armament:	64 guns of various weights of shot

For other ships of the same name, see HMS York.

HMS York was a 64-gun third rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, launched on 24 March 1796. She had originally been laid down at Barnard's Deptford yard as an East Indiaman named Royal Admiral, but the shortage of naval shipping caused by the outbreak of the Revolutionary War with France prompted her purchase and eventual commissioning under her new name in 1796.

As a 64-gun ship, she was a small third rate, and this factor combined with her unusual build resulting from her conversion from a mercantile craft to a warship to make a slightly ungainly and awkward ship. She spent much of her early career in the Caribbean Sea, where she had her only contact with the enemy when she captured the small French schooner Fancy near St Thomas.^{[citation needed]}

She departed Woolwich under Captain Henry Mitford on the 26 December 1803 for a routine patrol in the North Sea, but in January 1804 she struck Bell Rock in the North Sea off Arbroath, and sank with the loss of all 491 men and boys on board. Mitford was the second son of the historian William Mitford.

References

• Grocott, Terence, Shipwrecks of the Revolutionary & Napoleonic Eras, Caxton Editions, Great Britain: 2002. ISBN 1-84067-164-5.
• Michael Phillips. York (64) (1796). Michael Phillips' Ships of the Old Navy. Retrieved 5 November 2008.
• "BBC - History - Who built the Bell Rock Lighthouse?". http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/bell_rock_02.shtml. Retrieved 2007-07-13. 
• 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.