Built as a first-rate ship-of-the-line at the Portsmouth Dockyard, Portsmouth for the Royal Navy.
21 March 1727 ordered.
August 1733 keel laid down
23 February 1737 launched as the HMS VICTORY, the third vessel under that name by the Royal Navy.
Some frames where used of the ROYAL JAMES built in 1675, later renamed VICTORY.
Tonnage 1.921 tons burden, dim. 53 (length of gundeck) x 15 x 5.5m. (draught). Depth 6.2m.
Armament: lowerdeck 28 – 42pdrs., middle deck 28 – 24pdrs., upper deck 28 – 12pdrs., quarter deck 12 – 6 pdrs., and 4 – 6pdrs on forecastle.
Crew officially 850 but when she was lost she carried 1100 men.
August 1740 completed.
Commissioned 1740 under command of Captain Thomas Whitney as flagship Admiral Sir John Norris.
At that time she was the largest warship in the world.
16 July 1740 in collision with HMS LION, the VICTORY returned to Portsmouth under acting Captain Richard Lestock in August 1740. The VICTORY lost in the collision her head and bowsprit.
1741 Again a unit of the Channel Fleet.
December 1741 under command of Captain Samuel Faulkner
1744 Flagship of Sir John Balchen, Admiral of the White.
28July 1744 sailed out in the expedition to relieve Sir Charles Hardy’s fleet which was blockaded by the French in the Tagus estuary in 1744.
After a successful operation and thereafter used as escort for a convoy to Gibraltar, she sailed for home on 28 September 1744
30 September the squadron entered the Gulf of Biscay.
03 October the squadron was hit by a strong gale and heavy seas. The VICTORY was last seen on the morning of the 4th October but thereafter she vanished.
All the other ships of the squadron arrived safely in Plymouth.
Noting of the crew or the vessel was found.
The4 lighthouse keeper of the Casquets heard gunfire at approximately 2 am on the 5th October, but the weather was too atrocious that noting could be done.
Most probably the VICTORY grounded on Black Rock off the Casquets, and by the high seas and breakers she was smashed to pieces, and lost with all hands.
The wreck of the VICTORY was found by Odyssey Marine Exploration from Tampa, Florida in May 2008.
The wreck was found around 43 mile from where anybody would have been thought it sank, and is thought to have carried 100,000 gold coins-plundered from enemy ships and weighing four tonnes-and been armed with 100 cannons. It remains Crown property.
Oddyssey has already raised two of it's 12ft, foure tonne bronze cannons, now in MoD custody. Divers have found human remains including a skull.
Alderney 1991 21p sg A47, scott 60.
Source: Wikipedia. http://www.balchin-family.org.uk/family ... squets.htm
British Warships in the Age of Sail 1714-1792 by Rif Winfield. Also newspaper article.
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