Qualla: HMS Defence (1763)

HMS Defence (1763): Introduction

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit McKarri, CC BY-SA 3.0. By the winter of 1811 there was almost no famous action of the age that HMS Defence had missed. She had been dismasted at the Glorious First of June, fought at the Nile, taken a Spanish two-decker at Trafalgar. She was forty-eight years old, a long working life for a ship of the line, and she was doing the dull job the Navy spent most of its time on: shepherding merchantmen home through the Baltic before the ice closed. On Christmas Eve she was driven onto the sand off the west coast of Jutland with 597 men and boys aboard. Fourteen came off her alive. The question that has followed her since is not how she was lost, but why she was still there to be lost.

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Image: McKarri | CC BY-SA 3.0

HMS Defence (1763): Built for the Long War

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit unknown, Navy office, Public domain. Israel Pownoll launched her at Plymouth Dockyard on 31 March 1763, a Bellona-class third rate: 168 feet on the gundeck, 46 feet 9 inches in the beam, 1,603 tons burthen, seventy-four guns. The 74 was the workhorse of the sailing navy, heavy enough to stand in the line and fast en...

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Image: unknown, Navy office | Public domain

HMS Defence (1763): Twenty Years in the Line

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nicholas Pocock, Public domain. The French Revolutionary Wars brought her out again under Captain James Gambier. At the Glorious First of June in 1794 she went in hard against Mucius and Tourville and was one of only two British ships completely dismasted in the battle. Repaired, she joined Admiral William Hoth...

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Image: Nicholas Pocock | Public domain

HMS Defence (1763): Trafalgar and After

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit McKarri, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1801 she went to the Baltic under Captain Lord Henry Paulet with Hyde Parker's fleet and was present at Copenhagen, held in the reserve and never engaged. Four years later, off Cape Trafalgar under Captain George Johnstone Hope, she had a very different afternoon: she captured...

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Image: McKarri | CC BY-SA 3.0

HMS Defence (1763): "I Will Never Desert My Admiral"

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit McKarri, CC BY-SA 3.0. St George had already been half-wrecked once. She had grounded at Rødsand in November, lost every mast and her rudder, and was crossing the North Sea on a jury rig with a makeshift rudder lashed on with chain. Defence and the 74-gun Cressy were detailed to stay with her. On 23 De...

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Image: McKarri | CC BY-SA 3.0

HMS Defence (1763): Fourteen Men

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hjart, CC BY-SA 4.0. Defence grounded on 24 December 1811 and the sea broke her open. Of 597 men and boys, 583 died, Atkins among them; fourteen survived, and even that count varies between sources by a man or two. A few miles away St George was going to pieces with nearly 740 aboard — the two wrecks...

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Image: Hjart | CC BY-SA 4.0