Liverpool was built to the same design as HMS Carysfort, (pictured)
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History | |
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Great Britain | |
Name: | HMS Liverpool |
Ordered: | 3 September 1756 |
Builder: | John Gorill & William Pownall, Liverpool |
Laid down: | 1 October 1756 |
Launched: | 10 February 1758 |
Commissioned: | February 1758 |
General characteristics | |
Class and type: | Coventry-class sixth-rate frigate |
Tons burthen: | 589 85⁄94 bm |
Length: |
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Beam: | 33 ft 8½ in |
Sail plan: | Full-rigged ship |
Complement: | 200 |
Armament: |
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HMS Liverpool was a 28-gun Coventry-class sixth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy. Launched in 1758, she saw active service in the Seven Years' War and the American Revolutionary War. She was wrecked in Jamaica Bay, near New York, in 1778.
Liverpool was an oak-built 28-gun sixth-rate, one of 18 vessels forming part of the Coventry class of frigates. As with others in her class she was loosely modeled on the design and external dimensions of HMS Tartar, launched in 1756 and responsible for capturing five French privateers in her first twelve months at sea. The Admiralty Order to build the Coventry-class vessels was made after the outbreak of the Seven Years' War, and at a time in which the Royal Dockyards were fully engaged in constructing or fitting-out the Navy's ships of the line. Consequently, despite Navy Board misgivings about reliability and cost, contracts for all but one of Coventry-class vessels were issued to private shipyards with an emphasis on rapid completion of the task.
Contracts for Liverpool's construction were issued on 3 September 1756 to commercial shipwrights John Gorill and William Pownall. As Gorill and Pownall's shipyard was in the city of Liverpool, Admiralty determined that this would also be the name of the vessel herself. It was stipulated that work should be completed within eleven months for a 28-gun vessel measuring approximately 590 tons burthen. Subject to satisfactory completion, Gorill and Pownall would receive a modest fee of £8.7s per ton – the lowest for any Coventry-class vessel – to be paid through periodic imprests drawn against the Navy Board. Private shipyards were not subject to rigorous naval oversight, and the Admiralty therefore granted authority for "such alterations withinboard as shall be judged necessary" in order to cater for the preferences or ability of individual shipwrights, and for experimentation with internal design.