HMS Somerset (1748)
HMS Somerset participates in the Battle of Bunker Hill
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| History | |
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 Great Britain
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| Name: | HMS Somerset |
| Ordered: | 4 September 1746 |
| Builder: | Chatham Dockyard |
| Launched: | 18 July 1748 |
| Fate: | Wrecked, 2 November 1778 |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | 1745 Establishment 70-gun third rate ship of the line |
| Tons burthen: | 1,436 long tons (1,459.0 t) |
| Length: | 160 ft (48.8 m) (gundeck) |
| Beam: | 45 ft (13.7 m) |
| Depth of hold: | 19 ft 4 in (5.9 m) |
| Propulsion: | Sails |
| Sail plan: | Full rigged ship |
| Armament: |
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HMS Somerset was a 70-gun third-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, built at Chatham Dockyard to the draught specified by the 1745 Establishment, and launched on 18 July 1748. She was the third vessel of the Royal Navy to bear the name. Somerset was involved in several notable battles of the Seven Years' War and the American Revolutionary War. She was wrecked in a storm in 1778 when she ran aground off of Provincetown, on Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
HMS Somerset saw action at the capture of the fortress of Louisbourg and Cape Bretton Island during the Seven Years' War (a theatre known in the United States as the French and Indian War). In 1758, a British expedition under General Jeffrey Amherst besieged the fortress at Louisbourg, beginning on 8 June. The British had 39 ships with about 14,000 sailors, and a further landing force of 12,870 soldiers. The fortress was defended by 10 French ships with 3,870 sailors, and another 3,920 soldiers inside the fortress itself. The 48-day siege by Admiral Edward Boscawen and General Amherst ended with the French surrender on 26 July, clearing the way for a British expedition to sail up the Saint Lawrence River to take Quebec City the following summer.
The expedition against Quebec City, led by General James Wolfe, was landed by a force that included HMS Somerset. The British were victorious at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham on 13 September 1759 giving Britain control of Canada and North America's Atlantic seaboard.
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