HMS Alderney (1757)

Alderney was designed to the dimensions and shape of HMY Royal Caroline (depicted, by John Cleveley the Elder, 1750).
History
Great Britain
Name:	Alderney
Ordered:	14 November 1755
Builder:	John Snooks, Saltash
Laid down:	12 January 1756
Launched:	5 February 1757
Completed:	27 April 1757 at Saltash
Commissioned:	November 1756
Decommissioned:	Early 1783
In service:	1757–1764 1767–1783
Out of service:	1764–1767
Captured:	Sold out of service at Deptford Dockyard, 1 May 1783
General characteristics
Class and type:	10-gun Alderney-class sloop
Tons burthen:	235  39⁄94 bm
Length:	88 ft 4 in (26.9 m) (gundeck) 72 ft 3 in (22.0 m) (keel)
Beam:	24 ft 9 in (7.5 m)
Depth of hold:	10 ft 10.5 in (3.3 m)
Sail plan:	ship rig
Complement:	100
Armament:	10 × 4-pdrs (1757–1780) 12 × 4-pdrs (1780–1783)

HMS Alderney was a 10-gun (later, a 12-gun) Alderney-class sloop of the Royal Navy which saw active service during the Seven Years' War and the American Revolutionary War. Launched in 1757, she was principally deployed in the North Sea to protect British fishing fleets and merchant trade. In this capacity she captured two American privateers, the Hawk in 1779 and the 12-gun Lady Washington in 1780. She was removed from Navy service at the conclusion of the American Revolutionary War, and sold into private hands at Deptford Dockyard on 1 May 1783.

Alderney was the first of three vessels built to a 1755 design by Surveyor of the Navy William Bately, which collectively became known as Alderney-class sloops. These three vessels were Bately's first experience with ship design, for which he substantially borrowed from the shape and dimensions of George II's yacht HMY Royal Caroline, built in 1750 by Master Shipwright John Hollond. Bately then added to Hollond's hull design by lengthening the "fore-rake" – the area of the bow that extended beyond the keel – in order to improve the sloop's stability in heavy swell.

Admiralty Orders of 14 November 1755 indicated that the Alderney-class vessels were to be built at private dockyards, and on 17 December 1755 the contract for Alderney was issued to commercial shipwright John Snooks of Saltash. Contract terms stipulated that the vessel be completed within seven months at a cost of £7.13s per ton burthen. The new vessel's keel was laid in January 1756 and work commenced on the hull. Bately's initial design was for a two-masted snow-rigged sloop, but this was modified in mid-1756 into a traditional three-masted ship rig to increase speed, though at the expense of manoeuvrability. The half-built sloop was formally christened Alderney on 25 May 1756.