''San Francisco de Asis'' was a Spanish 74-gun ship of the line launched in 1767 from the royal shipyard in Guarnizo (Cantabria). She was wrecked after the

Battle of Trafalgar The Battle of Trafalgar (21 October 1805) was a naval engagement between the British Royal Navy and the combined fleets of the French and Spanish Navies during the War of the Third Coalition (August–December 1805) of the Napoleonic Wars (180 ...

in 1805 near Puerto de Santa Maria.

History

On January 25, 1797, the San Francisco de Asís, under the command of Captain

Alonso de Torres y Guerra Alonso is a Spanish name of Germanic origin that is a Castilian variant of ''Adalfuns''. Geographical distribution As of 2014, 36.6% of all known bearers of the surname ''Alonso'' were residents of Spain (frequency 1:222), 26.1% of Mexico (1:83 ...

, was on patrol off the coast of Cádiz for the protection of Spanish ships arriving with goods from America when it was attacked by three British frigates and a corvette. The Spanish ship faced them in hard combat and despite the inequality of forces, the San Francisco de Asís made the English ships flee causing them various damages and without hardly suffering them.''Gaceta de Madrid'' no 11, p. 105.
7 February 1797
''Todo a Babor. Revista de Historia Naval'' The ship was repaired and on February 14 of that same year took part in the Battle of Cape St. Vincent. Later it participated in the

under the command of Captain

Luis Antonio Flores Luis is a given name. It is the Spanish form of the originally Germanic name or . Other Iberian Romance languages have comparable forms: (with an accent mark on the i) in Portuguese and Galician, in Aragonese and Catalan, while is archai ...

. He did not perform much because of his unfavorable position in the course of the combat. After the battle and after repairing some of the breakdowns caused throughout the war, he went out again with several Spanish and French ships to try to dam the ships captured by the English, managing to dam the '' Santa Ana'' and ''

Neptune Neptune is the eighth planet from the Sun and the farthest known planet in the Solar System. It is the fourth-largest planet in the Solar System by diameter, the third-most-massive planet, and the densest giant planet. It is 17 times ...

''. Later it sinks on the coast of Puerto de Santa María as a result of the storm that followed the combat. The number of casualties it had were 5 men killed and 12 wounded.

References

Bibliography

* John D. Harbron ''Trafalgar and the Spanish Navy'' (1988)

External links

Historia del Navío de línea San Francisco de Asís
''Revista de Historia Naval'' {{DEFAULTSORT:San Francisco de Asis (1767), Spanish ship 1767 ships Ships of the line of the Spanish Navy Ships built in Spain Maritime incidents in 1805 Shipwrecks of Spain