HMS ''Deptford'' was a 60-gun

fourth rate In 1603 all English warships with a complement of fewer than 160 men were known as 'small ships'. In 1625/26 to establish pay rates for officers, a six-tier naval ship rating system was introduced.Winfield 2009 These small ships were divided ...

ship of the line A ship of the line was a type of naval warship constructed during the Age of Sail from the 17th century to the mid-19th century. The ship of the line was designed for the naval tactics in the Age of Sail, naval tactic known as the line of battl ...

of the

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the naval warfare force of the United Kingdom. It is a component of His Majesty's Naval Service, and its officers hold their commissions from the King of the United Kingdom, King. Although warships were used by Kingdom ...

, built to the dimensions of the

1719 Establishment The 1719 Establishment was a set of mandatory requirements governing the construction of all Royal Navy warships capable of carrying more than 20 naval long guns. It was designed to bring economies of scale through uniform vessel design, and e ...

Deptford Dockyard Deptford Dockyard was an important Royal Navy Dockyard, naval dockyard and base at Deptford on the River Thames, operated by the Royal Navy from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. It built and maintained warships for 350 years, and man ...

, and launched on 22 August 1732. In 1752, she was cut down to a 50-gun ship. On 31 January 1759 and ''Deptford'' chased a French privateer that ''Montagu'' captured the next day. The privateer was ''Marquis de Martigny'', of Granville. She had a crew of 104 men under the command of M. Le Crouse, and was armed with twenty 6-pounder guns. In 1761 ''Deptford'' sailed to

Jamaica Jamaica is an island country in the Caribbean Sea and the West Indies. At , it is the third-largest island—after Cuba and Hispaniola—of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean. Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, west of Hispaniola (the is ...

carrying a

timekeeper A timekeeper is a person that measures the passage of time. They may have additional functions in sports and business. Description A timekeeper is a person who measures time with the assistance of a clock or a stopwatch. Functions Sports In ...

built by

John Harrison John Harrison ( – 24 March 1776) was an English carpenter and clockmaker who invented the marine chronometer, a long-sought-after device for solving the History of longitude, problem of how to calculate longitude while at sea. Harrison's sol ...

, as a part of a series of experiments to determine

longitude Longitude (, ) is a geographic coordinate that specifies the east- west position of a point on the surface of the Earth, or another celestial body. It is an angular measurement, usually expressed in degrees and denoted by the Greek lett ...

at sea.

Fate

''Deptford'' was sold out of the navy in 1767.

Citations

References

*Lavery, Brian (1983) ''The Ship of the Line – Volume 1: The development of the battlefleet 1650-1850''. Conway Maritime Press. . Ships of the line of the Royal Navy 1730s ships {{UK-line-ship-stub