Ship of the line of the Royal Navy
For other ships with the same name, see
HMS Nassau .
Silhouette of the ship-of-the-line Nassau
History
Great Britain
Name HMS Nassau
Ordered 14 November 1782
Builder Hilhouse , Bristol
Laid down March 1783
Launched 28 September 1785
Fate Wrecked 14 October 1799
General characteristics [ 1]
Class and type Ardent -class ship of the line
Tons burthen 1384 (bm )
Length 160 ft (49 m) (gundeck)
Beam 44 ft 4 in (13.51 m)
Depth of hold 19 ft (5.8 m)
Propulsion Sails
Sail plan Full-rigged ship
Armament
64 guns:
Gundeck: 26 × 24-pounder guns
Upper gundeck: 26 × 18-pounder guns
QD : 10 × 4-pounder guns
Fc : 2 × 9-pounder guns
HMS Nassau was a 64-gun third rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy , launched on 28 September 1785 by Hilhouse in Bristol.[ 1]
One of her first ship's surgeons is thought to be John Sylvester Hay. He died young but he was the father of the actress Harriett Litchfield .[ 2]
During the Nore Mutiny she was commanded by Captain Edward O'Bryen . She was converted for use as a troopship in 1797.[ 1]
Nassau was wrecked on the Kicks sandbar off Texel , the Netherlands , on 14 October 1799, there being 205 survivors and about 100 lives lost.[ 3]
Notes
^ a b c Lavery, Ships of the Line vol.1, p181.
^ K. A. Crouch, ‘Litchfield, Harriett (1777–1854)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 accessed 1 Feb 2015
^ The Reading Mercury and Oxford Gazette , 11 November 1799
References
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 .
External links
Shipwrecks Other incidents