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	Abondance
History
France
Name	Abondance
Namesake	Abundance
Builder	Jean-Joseph Ginoux, Le Havre
Laid down	January 1780
Launched	16 September 1780
Captured	12 December 1781
Great Britain
Name	HMS Abondance
Acquired	12 December 1781 by capture
Fate	Sold 1784
Great Britain
Name	Abondance
Acquired	1784 by purchase
Fate	No longer listed in 1786
General characteristics
Class and type	Baleine-class gabare
Tons burthen	524, or 52650⁄94, or 600 (bm)
Length	Overall:132 ft 6 in (40.4 m); Keel:113 ft 11+7⁄8 in (34.7 m);
Beam	29 ft 5+3⁄4 in (9.0 m)
Depth of hold	11 ft 9 in (3.6 m)
Propulsion	Sails
Complement	French service: 90; UK; Transport:200; Storeship:52;
Armament	French service: 20 × 8-pounder guns; British service: ; Troopship: 24 × 9-pounder + 4 × 4-pounder guns; Storeship: 14 guns;

Abondance was a French Baleine-class gabare (cargo ship) launched in 1780. The Royal Navy captured her on 11 December 1781 and took her into service as a troop transport and store ship under the name HMS Abondance. After the end of the war with France the Admiralty sold her in 1784. She then became a merchantman.

Career

Abondance was launched at Le Havre in September 1780.^[3] She sailed on 11 December 1781 for the Antilles in a convoy under the command of Admiral de Guichen. She was under the command of a M. Dupuis and was carrying 248 soldiers and ordnance, stores, and provisions.^[4]

On the 12th Admiral Kempenfelt, who had been sent out by the Admiralty with an unduly weak force to intercept de Guichen, sighted the French convoy in the Bay of Biscay through a temporary clearance in a fog, at a moment when de Guichen's warships were to leeward of the convoy, and attacked the transports at once. de Guichen could not prevent the British from capturing 15 of the transports, Abondance among them, destroying two or three others, and driving the remainder into a panic-stricken flight. The survivors returned to port; de Guichen therefore returned to port also.

The Royal Navy sent Abondance into Plymouth and then took her into service, rating her as a 28-gun sixth rate. Lieutenant N. Phillips commissioned her in April 1783 and on 23 May sailed for North America.^[1] She made several trips carrying black loyalists to Halifax, among them the fiery Methodist preacher Moses Wilkinson. In November, she evacuated the last group, some 80 members of the Black Brigade, a unit of black loyalists, from New York.^[5]

Disposal: Phillips paid off Abondance in March 1784. The Admiralty then sold her for £2,200 on 29 April.^[1]

Abondance entered Lloyd's Register in 1784 with T. Eve, master, L. Teffier, owner, and trade London–Ostend.^[6] She was no longer listed in 1786.

Citations

^ ^a ^b ^c Winfield (2007), p. 242.
^ Roche (2005), p. 2.
^ Demerliac (1996), p. 102, #702.
^ Beatson (1804), p. 319.
^ Finkelman (2006), pp. 139–40.
^ Lloyd's Register (1784), seq.№A538.

References

Beatson, Robert (1804). Naval and Military Memoirs of Great Britain, from 1727 to 1783. Vol. 6. Longman, Hurst, Rees and Orme.
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.
Demerliac, Alain (1996). La Marine de Louis XVI: Nomenclature des Navires Français de 1774 à 1792. Nice: Éditions OMEGA. ISBN 2-906381-23-3.
Finkelman, Paul (6 April 2006). Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619-1895: From the Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglass. Vol. 2. Oxford University Press, USA. ISBN 9780195167771.
Roche, Jean-Michel (2005). Dictionnaire des Bâtiments de la Flotte de Guerre Française de Colbert à nos Jours. Group Retozel-Maury Millau.
Winfield, Rif (2007). British Warships in the Age of Sail 1714–1792: Design, Construction, Careers and Fates. Seaforth. ISBN 978-1844157006.

This article includes data released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported UK: England & Wales Licence, by the National Maritime Museum, as part of the Warship Histories project.