HMS ''Queen'' was a three-deck 90-gun

second-rate In the rating system of the Royal Navy used to categorise sailing warships, a second-rate was a ship of the line which by the start of the 18th century mounted 90 to 98 guns on three gun decks; earlier 17th-century second rates had fewer gun ...

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 ...

, launched on 18 September 1769 at

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 ...

. She was designed by William Bateley, and was the only ship built to her draught. Her armament was increased to 98 guns in the 1780s.Naval-Art.com, HMS ''Queen''.

Service

''Queen'' fought at the

First Battle of Ushant The Battle of Ushant (also called the First Battle of Ushant) took place on 27 July 1778, and was fought during the American Revolutionary War between French and British fleets west of Ushant, an island at the mouth of the English Channel off ...

under Keppel in 1778, and the

Second Battle of Ushant The Second Battle of Ushant was a naval battle fought between French and British squadrons near Ushant, an island off the coast of Brittany, on 12 December 1781, as part of the American Revolutionary War. Background On 10 December 1781 a French ...

under Kempenfelt in 1781. In 1794 she fought in the

Glorious First of June The Glorious First of June (1 June 1794), also known as the Fourth Battle of Ushant, (known in France as the or ) was the first and largest fleet action of the naval conflict between the Kingdom of Great Britain and the First French Republic ...

under Howe, where she served as Rear-Admiral Alan Gardner's flagship. During the battle ''Queen'' sustained significant damage, and her commanding officer, Captain

John Hutt John Hutt (24 July 1795 – 9 April 1880) was Governor of Western Australia from 1839 to 1846. Life Born in London on 24 July 1795, John Hutt was the fourth of 13 children of Richard Hutt of Appley Towers, Ryde, Isle of Wight. He was educate ...

, was amongst those killed. For some of the period between 1798 and 1802, she was under the command of Captain Theophilus Jones. 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 ...

on 21 October 1805, ''Queen'' continued in the blockade of Cadiz. On 25 November, detained the Ragusan ship ''Nemesis'', which was sailing from Isle de France to

Leghorn, Italy Livorno () is a port city on the Ligurian Sea on the western coast of Tuscany, Italy. It is the capital of the Province of Livorno, having a population of 158,493 residents in December 2017. It is traditionally known in English as Leghorn (pronou ...

, with a cargo of spice, indigo dye, and other goods. ''Queen'' shared the prize money with ten other British warships. On 25 October 1806, the Spanish privateer ''Generalísimo'' captured HM gunboat ''Hannah'', which was serving as a tender to ''Queen''. After Trafalgar, the demand for the large three-decker first and second rates diminished. Consequently, in 1811 the Admiralty had ''Queen''

razee A razee or razée is a sailing ship that has been cut down (''razeed'') to reduce the number of decks. The word is derived from the French ''vaisseau rasé'', meaning a razed (in the sense of shaved down) ship. Seventeenth century During the ...

d to become a two-decker

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 ...

of 74 guns.

Fate

''Queen'' was eventually broken up in 1821, at the age of 52.

Citations

References

*Lavery, Brian (2003) ''The Ship of the Line - Volume 1: The development of the battlefleet 1650-1850.'' Conway Maritime Press. . *Naval-Art.co
HMS ''Queen''
Cranston Fine Arts. Retrieved 30 August 2008. * {{DEFAULTSORT:Queen (1769) Ships of the line of the Royal Navy 1769 ships