HMS ''Grenville'', was a schooner (later re-rigged as a brig) built in
Marblehead, Massachusetts, and originally named ''Sally''. The ship was purchased and renamed ''Grenville'' (for the British Prime Minister
George Grenville
George Grenville (14 October 1712 – 13 November 1770) was a British Whig statesman who rose to the position of Prime Minister of Great Britain. Grenville was born into an influential political family and first entered Parliament in 1741 as an ...
) by
Thomas Graves, Governor of Newfoundland on 7 August 1763 in
Newfoundland.
[Robson. Page 136] From 1763 to 1767 English surveyor and explorer
James Cook commanded ''Grenville'', his first independent command.
Over the winter of 1764–65 ''Grenville'' sailed to
Deptford Dockyard
Deptford Dockyard was an important naval dockyard and base at Deptford on the River Thames, operated by the Royal Navy from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. It built and maintained warships for 350 years, and many significant events ...
for a refit. She was re-rigged as a brig, at Cook's request. Among many advantages, the greater maneuverability of a brig was important for surveying work. (It is a common misconception that a schooner of that era sailed better to windward than a brig.) ''Grenville'' left Deptford on 22 April 1765 and sighted
Cape Race
Cape Race is a point of land located at the southeastern tip of the Avalon Peninsula on the island of Newfoundland, in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. Its name is thought to come from the original Portuguese name for this cape, "Raso", mean ...
on 31 May.
For each summer season of Cook's command, Grenville sailed from Deptford to
Newfoundland and Labrador
Newfoundland and Labrador (; french: Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador; frequently abbreviated as NL) is the easternmost provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada, in the country's Atlantic Canada, Atlantic region. The province comprises t ...
to survey the coastal waters. Much of the area that he covered had not been surveyed in any way beforehand. Cook employed new surveying techniques, using shore-based theodolites to record the position of a
ship's boat
A ship's boat is a utility boat carried by a larger vessel. Ship's boats have always provided communication with the shore and with other ships. Other work done by such boats has varied over time, as marine technology has changed. In the age o ...
that made a running survey of depths. This avoided many of the inaccuracies of calculating the position of the surveying boat from a ship whose position might not be totally accurately known. In 1766, Cook was able to make an exact fix of longitude from observations of a solar eclipse. At the end of the 1767 surveying season, ''Grenville'' ran aground near the
Nore lighthouse in a severe storm (shortly after taking on board a pilot for the Thames estuary). The crew were taken off and the ship left whilst the storm took two days to blow itself out. She was got off on the next high tide.
In 1768, Cook left ''Grenville'' to begin his
first circumnavigation of the world on
HMS Endeavour
HMS ''Endeavour'' was a British Royal Navy research vessel that Lieutenant James Cook commanded to Australia and New Zealand on his first voyage of discovery from 1768 to 1771.
She was launched in 1764 as the collier ''Earl of Pembroke'', ...
.
In 1770 ''Grenville'' brought troops to Tobago from Barbados and they, together with troops from
Fort Granby, helped suppress a slave rebellion.
The ship was broken up in March 1775.
[Marquardt, p.33]
Citations
References
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*John Robson (2009). Captain Cook’s War and Peace: The Royal Navy years, 1755-1768. Seaforth Publishing.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Grenville (1754)
1754 ships
Schooners of the Royal Navy