History | |
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Great Britain | |
Name: | HMS Lively |
Ordered: | 20 May 1755 |
Builder: | Moody Janverin, Bursledon, Hampshire |
Laid down: | c. June 1755 |
Launched: | 10 August 1756 |
Commissioned: | August 1756 |
Decommissioned: | August 1781 |
Captured: | 10 July 1778, by French frigate Iphigénie. |
France | |
Acquired: | 10 July 1778 |
Captured: | 29 July 1781, by HMS Perseverance |
Great Britain | |
Acquired: | 29 July 1781 |
Fate: | Sold, 11 March 1784 |
General characteristics | |
Tons burthen: | 439 (bm) |
Length: | 108 ft (32.9 m) |
Beam: | 30 ft 5 1⁄4 in (9.3 m) |
Depth of hold: | 9 ft 8 in (2.9 m) |
Complement: | 160 officers and men |
Armament: |
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HMS Lively was a 20-gun post ship of the Royal Navy, launched in 1756. During the Seven Years' War she captured several vessels, most notably the French corvette Valeur in 1760. She then served during the American Revolutionary War, where she helped initiate the Battle of Bunker Hill. The French captured her in 1778, but the British recaptured her 1781. She was sold in 1784.
Lively was commissioned in July 1756 under Captain Francis Wyatt. In November 1756 she captured the French privateer Intrépide, of Nantes, and her prize, Charming Molly, which had been sailing from Malaga to Bristol. Intrépide was armed with eight guns and 10 swivel guns, and had a crew of 75 men. Lively brought the two vessels into Plymouth. Around this time she also recaptured the merchant vessel Pike, of Liverpool.
Lively sailed for Jamaica on 31 January 1757. In March 1759 she was under the command of Captain Frederick Maitland, at Jamaica.
On 17 October 1760 she was with Hampshire and Boreas when they intercepted five French vessels in the Windward Passage. The French vessels had sailed from Cape Francois and were carrying sugar an indigo.
The next day Lively, using her sweeps, caught up with the sternmost enemy vessel, the French 20-gun corvette Valeur. Valeur had a crew of 160 men under the command of a Captain Talbot. In the hour-and-a-half fight before Valeur struck, Lively had two men killed but no wounded; Valeur had 38 killed and 25 wounded, including her captain, master, and boatswain. At the same time, Boreas captured Sirenne, and Hampshire chased the merchant frigate Prince Edward on shore where her crew set fire to her, causing her to blow up.
The day after that, on 19 October, Hampshire, with Lively and Valeur, cornered the French frigate Fleur de Lis in Freshwater Bay, a little to leeward of Port-de-Paix; her crew too set her on fire. The merchant frigate Duc de Choiseul, of 32 guns and 180 men under the command of Captain Bellevan, escaped into Port-de-Paix.