HMS ''Captain'' was a 70-gun

third-rate In the rating system of the Royal Navy, a third rate was a ship of the line which from the 1720s mounted between 64 and 80 guns, typically built with two gun decks (thus the related term two-decker). Years of experience proved that the third r ...

ship of the line of 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 ...

, built according to the 1733 proposals of the

1719 Establishment The 1719 Establishment was a set of mandatory requirements governing the construction of all Royal Navy warships capable of carrying more than 20 naval long guns. It was designed to bring economies of scale through uniform vessel design, and en ...

Woolwich Dockyard Woolwich Dockyard (formally H.M. Dockyard, Woolwich, also known as The King's Yard, Woolwich) was an English naval dockyard along the river Thames at Woolwich in north-west Kent, where many ships were built from the early 16th century until th ...

, and launched on 14 April 1743.

Francis Light Captain Francis Light ( – 21 October 1794) was a British explorer and the founder of the British colony of Penang (in modern-day Malaysia) and its capital city of George Town in 1786. Light and his lifelong partner, Martina Rozells, were th ...

, founder of Penang, served for a few months as an apprentice on ''Captain'' around 1759. In 1760, the ''Captain'' was reduced to a 64-gun ship. On August 12, 1771 the ''Captain'' entered Boston Harbor with John Montagu,

Rear-Admiral Rear admiral is a senior naval flag officer rank, equivalent to a major general and air vice marshal and above that of a commodore and captain, but below that of a vice admiral. It is regarded as a two star "admiral" rank. It is often regarde ...

of the

Blue Squadron The Blue Squadron (Spanish: ''Escuadrilla Azul'', German: ''15. Spanische Staffel'') was a generic name given to the group of volunteer pilots and ground crews recruited from the Spanish Air Force that fought in the side of Germany on the E ...

and newly appointed Commander-in-Chief of the North American Station. She served as Montagu's flagship while he oversaw the Royal Navy's support of customs enforcement under the

Townshend Acts The Townshend Acts () or Townshend Duties, were a series of British acts of Parliament passed during 1767 and 1768 introducing a series of taxes and regulations to fund administration of the British colonies in America. They are named after the ...

. The ''Captain'' was present in Boston Harbor—along with the ''

Active Active may refer to: Music * ''Active'' (album), a 1992 album by Casiopea * Active Records, a record label Ships * ''Active'' (ship), several commercial ships by that name * HMS ''Active'', the name of various ships of the British Royal ...

'' and ''

Kingfisher Kingfishers are a family, the Alcedinidae, of small to medium-sized, brightly colored birds in the order Coraciiformes. They have a cosmopolitan distribution, with most species found in the tropical regions of Africa, Asia, and Oceania, ...

—''on December 16, 1773 when the

Boston Tea Party The Boston Tea Party was an American political and mercantile protest by the Sons of Liberty in Boston, Massachusetts, on December 16, 1773. The target was the Tea Act of May 10, 1773, which allowed the British East India Company to sell t ...

took place. The ships were readied for action, and "it was expected that the men of war would have interfered" to prevent the destruction of the tea, but according to Admiral Montagu the civil leadership never called for his assistance. He claimed that if they had, he could have easily prevented the tea's destruction, "but must have endangered the Lives of many innocent people by firing upon the town", presumably with the guns of the ''Captain''. In 1777 the ''Captain'' was converted to serve as a storeship and renamed ''Buffalo''. Although a storeship, ''Buffalo'' shared, with , and , in the proceeds from s capture of the 12-gun French privateer ''Comte de Maurepas'', on 3 August 1780. In 1781, with 60 guns back on board, although she only had 18-pounders on the lower deck, she participated in the

Fourth Anglo-Dutch War The Fourth Anglo-Dutch War ( nl, Vierde Engels-Nederlandse Oorlog; 1780–1784) was a conflict between the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Dutch Republic. The war, contemporary with the War of American Independence (1775-1783), broke out ove ...

at the Battle of Dogger Bank. ''Buffalo'' returned to the role of storeship until she was broken up in 1783.

Notes

References

*Lavery, Brian (2003) ''The Ship of the Line – Volume 1: The development of the battlefleet 1650–1850.'' Conway Maritime Press. . Ships of the line of the Royal Navy 1743 ships {{UK-line-ship-stub