HMS Mermaid (1749)

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Career (UK) Royal Navy Ensign
Name: HMS Mermaid
Ordered: 4 February 1748
Builder: Henry Adams, Bucklers Hard
Laid down: 2 April 1748
Launched: 22 May 1749
Commissioned: June 1749
Fate: Bilged and abandoned on 6 January 1760
General characteristics
Class and type: Sixth-rate post ship
Tons burthen: 533 tons
Length: 114 ft 10.5 in (35.014 m) (overall)
96 ft 10 in (29.51 m) (keel)
Beam: 32 ft 2 in (9.80 m)
Depth of hold: 10 ft 2.5 in (3.112 m)
Sail plan: Full-rigged ship
Complement: 160
Armament:
  • Upper deck: 22 × 9 pdrs
  • Quarter deck: 2 x 3 pdrs

HMS Mermaid was a 24-gun sixth-rate post ship of the Royal Navy, built in 1748-49, which served in the Seven Years War.

Construction and commissioning

Mermaid was ordered on 4 February 1748, with the contract being awarded to Henry Adams, of Bucklers Hard, with the keel being laid on 2 April. She was built to a design by the Surveyor of the Navy Joseph Allin, named Mermaid on 6 December, launched on 22 May 1749 and completed on 7 August 1749 at Portsmouth Dockyard, having cost £4,211.16.7d to build, and with a further £3,829.3.11d spent on fitting her out.[1]

Career

Her first commander was Captain John Montagu, who commissioned her in June 1749, and sailed her to New York in August 1749.[1] Montagu was succeeded by Captain Edward Keller in 1750, then later that year by Captain Elias Bate, and in 1753 by Captain John Hollwall.[1] Mermaid served this first commission in North American and Caribbean waters, and was decommissioned in July 1753. She refitted and underwent repairs over the nextr few months, and recommissioned in January 1754 under Captain Washington Shirley, sailing for New England in July 1754. Captain Alexander Innes took command in 1756, and was succeed by Captain James Hackman in 1758.[1] She bilged on a sandbank off Charles, South Carolina on 2 December 1759 and was abandoned as a wreck on 6 January 1760.[1]

Notes

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Winfield. British Warships of the Age of Sail. pp. p. 255. 

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