HMS Carysfort (1766)

Print by Thomas Whitcombe depicting HMS Carysfort retaking Castor from the French on 29 May 1794
History
Great Britain
Name:	HMS Carysfort
Namesake:	John Proby, 1st Baron Carysfort, former Lord of the Admiralty
Ordered:	4 & 20 February 1764
Builder:	Sheerness Dockyard
Laid down:	June 1764
Launched:	23 August 1766
Completed:	11 August 1767
Commissioned:	June 1767
Honours and awards:	Naval General Service Medal with clasp "Carysfort 29 May 1794"
Fate:	Sold on 28 April 1813
General characteristics
Class and type:	28-gun Coventry-class sixth-rate frigate
Tons burthen:	586 30⁄94 (bm)
Length:	118 ft 4 in (36.1 m) (overall) 97 ft 3 1⁄2 in (29.7 m) (keel)
Beam:	33 ft 8 in (10.3 m)
Depth of hold:	10 ft 6 in (3.20 m)
Sail plan:	Full-rigged ship
Complement:	200
Armament:	As built: Gundeck: 24 × 9-pounder guns QD: 4 × 3-pounder guns 12 × ½-pdr swivel guns From 1780: Gundeck: 24 × 9-pounder guns QD: 4 × 6-ppounder guns & 4 x 18-pounder carronades Fc: 2 × 18-pounder carronades From 1794: Upperdeck: 24 × 9-pounder guns QD: 4 × 6-pounder guns & 4 x 24-pounder carronades Fc: 2 × 24-pounder carronades

HMS Carysfort was a 28-gun Coventry-class sixth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy. She served during the American War of Independence, the French Revolutionary and the Napoleonic Wars in a career that spanned over forty years.

She had a number of notable commanders during this period, and saw action in several single-ship actions against French and American opponents. She took several privateers during the American War of Independence, though one of her most notable actions was the recapture of Castor, a Royal Navy frigate that a French squadron had captured nearly three weeks earlier and a French prize crew was sailing to France. Carysfort engaged and forced the surrender of her larger opponent, restoring Castor to the British, though not without a controversy over the issue of prize money. Carysfort spent the later French Revolutionary and early Napoleonic Wars on stations in the East and later the West Indies. Carysfort returned to Britain in 1806 where she was laid up in ordinary. The Admiralty finally sold her in 1813.

The Admiralty ordered Carysfort from Sheerness Dockyard in February 1764 and laid down there in June that year. Master shipwright John Williams oversaw her construction until June 1765, and William Gray took over until her completion. She was named on 29 July 1765 and launched on 23 August 1766. She was completed by 11 August 1767, after the expenditure of £11,101 14s 11d to build, plus £1,614 13s 3d on fitting her out.

Carysfort commissioned under her first commander, Captain George Vandeput in June 1767, and sailed for the Mediterranean in September that year. Vandeput remained in command until 1770, when in February Captain William Hay replaced him. Hay continued in the Mediterranean until May, when he sailed to Jamaica. On that trip she ran aground in the Straits of Florida. Carysfort Reef there is named for her.