''Abondance'' was a French ''Baleine''-class gabare (cargo ship) launched in 1780. The
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against F ...
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. 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.
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
The Bay of Biscay (), known in Spain as the Gulf of Biscay ( es, Golfo de Vizcaya, eu, Bizkaiko Golkoa), and in France and some border regions as the Gulf of Gascony (french: Golfe de Gascogne, oc, Golf de Gasconha, br, Pleg-mor Gwaskogn), ...
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
In the rating system of the Royal Navy used to categorise sailing warships, a sixth-rate was the designation for small warships mounting between 20 and 28 carriage-mounted guns on a single deck, sometimes with smaller guns on the upper works and ...
. Lieutenant N. Phillips commissioned her in April 1783 and on 23 May sailed for North America. She made several trips carrying black loyalists to
Halifax, among them the fiery Methodist preacher
Moses Wilkinson
Moses "Daddy Moses" Wilkinson or "Old Moses" (c. 1746/47 Wilkinson's entry in the Book of Negroes gives his age as 36. – ?) was an American Wesleyan Methodist preacher and Black Loyalist. His ministry combined Old Testament divination with ...
. In November, she evacuated the last group, some 80 members of the
Black Brigade, a unit of black loyalists, from New York.
Disposal: Phillips paid off ''Abondance'' in March 1784. The Admiralty then sold her for £2,200 on 29 April.
''Abondance'' entered ''
Lloyd's Register
Lloyd's Register Group Limited (LR) is a technical and professional services organisation and a maritime classification society, wholly owned by the Lloyd’s Register Foundation, a UK charity dedicated to research and education in science and ...
'' in 1784 with T. Eve, master, L. Teffier, owner, and trade London–Ostend.
[''Lloyd's Register'' (1784), seq.№A538.]
/ref> She was no longer listed in 1786.
Citations
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Abondance (1780)
1780 ships
Age of Sail ships of France
Ships built in France
Captured ships
Ships of the Royal Navy
Black Loyalists