HMS Resistance was a 44-gun fifth-rate Roebuck-class ship of the Royal Navy launched in 1782. Based on the design of HMS Roebuck, the class was built for use off the coast of North America during the American Revolutionary War. Commissioned by Captain James King, Resistance served on the West Indies Station for the rest of the war. She captured the 24-gun corvette on 2 March 1783 and then went on in the same day to participate in the unsuccessful Battle of Grand Turk alongside Horatio Nelson. Resistance then went for a refit in Jamaica, during which time King fell ill and was replaced by Captain Edward O'Bryen. O'Bryen commanded Resistance until March 1784 when she was paid off. In 1791 she was recommissioned as a troop ship, but was converted back into a warship in 1793 at the start of the French Revolutionary War, under Captain Edward Pakenham.
Resistance was sent to serve on the East Indies Station, where she was present at the capture of the 34-gun frigate Duguay Trouin on 5 May 1794. She then participated in the capture of Malacca on 17 August 1795. She was similarly part of the force that captured Amboyna Island on 16 February 1796, and Banda Neira on 8 March. Continuing the campaign to capture Dutch possessions in the East Indies, Resistance took Kupang, Timor, on 10 June 1797, but the native population rebelled against the new temporary governor. Pakenham fired on the town and then sent a landing party in to regain control, destroying most of Kupang in the process.
On 21 July 1798 Resistance cut out a Malay merchant sloop, and after ascertaining the legal ownership of the vessel, sailed to Bangka Strait to return her to her captain. Arriving on 23 July, Resistance anchored in the evening. At 1 a.m. on 24 July, Resistance suddenly caught fire and exploded, killing 332 people. Of the thirteen survivors, only four successfully reached Sumatra on a makeshift raft. Enslaved by local pirates, they were eventually rescued by the Sultan of Lingga.
Design and construction Resistance was a 44-gun, 18-pounder . The class was a revival of the design used to construct the fifth-rate HMS Roebuck in 1769, by Sir Thomas Slade. The ships, while classified as fifth-rates, were not frigates because they carried two gun decks, of which a frigate would have only one. Roebuck was designed as such to provide the extra firepower a ship of two decks could bring to warfare but with a much lower draught and smaller profile. From 1751 to 1776 only two ships of this type were built for the Royal Navy because it was felt that they were anachronistic, with the lower (and more heavily armed) deck of guns being so low as to be unusable in anything but the calmest of waters. In the 1750s the cruising role of the 44-gun two deck ship was taken over by new 32- and 36-gun frigates, leaving the type almost completely obsolete.
When the American Revolutionary War began in 1776 a need was found for heavily armed ships that could fight in the shallow coastal waters of North America, where two-decked third-rates could not safely sail, and so the Roebuck class of nineteen ships, alongside the similar Adventure class, was ordered to the specifications of the original ships to fill this need. The frigate classes that had overtaken the 44-gun ship as the preferred design for cruisers were at this point still mostly armed with 9- and 12-pounder guns, and it was expected that the class's heavier 18-pounders would provide them with an advantage over these vessels. Frigates with larger armaments would go on to be built by the Royal Navy later on in the American Revolutionary Wars, but these ships were highly expensive and so Resistance and her brethren continued to be built as a cheaper alternative.
While most of Roebucks design was carried over to the new ships, some aspects were changed to reflect the changes in technology that had occurred in the passing years. Roebuck and the ships of the class ordered before 1782 were armed with twenty-two 9-pounder guns on their upper decks, but in that year the class was rearmed with more powerful 12-pounders, the same year Resistance was launched. As well as this change in armament, all ships laid down after the first four of the class had the double level of stern windows removed and replaced with a single level of windows, moving the style of the ships closer to that of a true frigate.
All but one ship of the class was contracted out to civilian dockyards for construction, and the contract for Resistance was given to Edward Greaves at Limehouse. She was ordered on 29 March 1780, laid down in April 1781 and launched on 11 July 1782 with the following dimensions: along the gun deck, at the keel, with a beam of and a depth in the hold of . Her draught, which made the class so valued in the American Revolutionary War, was . She measured 894 tons burthen. The fitting out process for Resistance was completed, including the addition of her copper sheathing, on 17 August at Deptford Dockyard.
Service American Revolutionary War
Resistance was first commissioned in March 1782 under the command of Captain James King. Having been fitted out, she sailed to Long Reach on 17 September where she took her armament and gun powder aboard. Preparations for service were completed on 29 September. She was sent to join the West Indies Station, sailing there from Spithead in control of a convoy of 500 merchant ships on 11 November, the responsibility and stress of which turned King's hair grey. They arrived at Carlisle Bay, Barbados, on 12 December. Resistance then went patrolling off Jamaica with the 18-gun sloop HMS Duguay Trouin; on 9 February 1783 they encountered a squadron consisting of a ship of the line, two frigates, and a sloop, one of which flew a French flag, however upon investigation it was found that the squadron was a British one with a French prize. Resistance captured her first prize on 16 February when she caught the American merchantman Fox as the latter attempted to sail to Hispaniola.
Resistance continued in company with Duguay Trouin, and on 2 March they were sailing through Turk's Island passage when they discovered two French warships at anchor there. The enemy vessels made to escape from the British ships, but as the rearmost ship began to sail away, she lost her mainmast. This ship was a 20-gun vessel, and Resistance soon came up with the stationary vessel and fired a broadside from her upper deck guns into her before moving on in chase of the other French ship, the 24-gun corvette La Coquette. The chase went on for fifteen minutes before Resistance managed to sail to leeward of La Coquette, at which point the French warship surrendered. King put La Coquette under the command of Lieutenant James Trevenen and continued on his patrol. On 6 March the ships captured a Danish brig and on 8 March they captured two more merchant vessels, including the American ship Hope, all of which were sent to Port Royal.
La Coquette had been part of a French squadron that had captured the island of Grand Turk on 12 February, and later on 6 March Resistance and her consorts met near there with the 26-gun frigate HMS Albemarle and 14-gun brig-sloop HMS Drake. Albemarle was commanded by Captain Horatio Nelson, who was senior to King and took command of the group. Nelson decided to attempt to take back Grand Turk from the French, and early on 8 March a landing was made by a group of 250 seamen and marines under the cover of the guns of two brigs also attached to the squadron. The ships were fired upon by a 3-gun battery as they closed in on the land, and the French garrison met the landing party as it arrived, attacking it with more cannon. The Battle of Grand Turk was unsuccessful and the landing party was forced to return to their ships, the island untaken. On the following night it was decided that another attack would be made, this time with the larger ships of the squadron attacking the gun batteries first. Before this plan could be put into action the wind changed and made it impossible for the ships to stay on station, and the attempt was abandoned. After stopping at Jamaica on 13 March, Resistance sailed to Port Royal with Albemarle the next day to undergo a three-month refit, during which time King lived ashore.
King's health started to rapidly deteriorate, and at one point he went six weeks without stepping onboard Resistance because of this. He resigned command of the ship on 14 June. On 6 August King's replacement, Captain Edward O'Bryen, took command of Resistance; O'Bryen commanded Resistance into 1784 before sailing her to England to be paid off in March of that year. She received a repair at Portsmouth Dockyard between July and December 1785 at the cost of £6,945, but was not immediately put back into service, the American Revolutionary War having ended.
Troop ship With the wartime necessity of using the obsolete ships as frontline warships now at an end, most ships of Resistances type were taken out of service. While lacking modern fighting capabilities, the design still provided a fast ship, and so the Comptroller of the Navy, Sir Charles Middleton, pressed them into service as troop ships. Resistance was recommissioned as such in February 1791 under the command of Commander John O'Bryen, still at this point situated at Portsmouth. She was fitted out for her new role between March and April, and sailed with soldiers for Gibraltar on 2 May. Despite being reconfigured to carry men and supplies, Resistance was still recorded as a warship and was armed en flute at this time, with twenty 9-pounders and four 6-pounders. On 27 May she left Gibraltar to convey a force including Prince Edward and his mistress Madame de Saint-Laurent to Canada, arriving in the St Lawrence River on 11 August.
Resistance was subsequently recommissioned as a warship at Portsmouth in June 1793 under Captain Edward Pakenham. The Royal Navy had built twenty-seven 44-gun two-decked ships for the American Revolutionary War, but with the war having ended before most had seen much service, they were some of the newest and best condition ships available to the navy. With the French Revolutionary Wars having begun, Resistance was pushed quickly into service to fill the gap left by a lack of available 18-pounder frigates, despite her class by this point being completely unsuited to the task. She stayed at Portsmouth between July and August to be refitted and subsequently sailed to join the East Indies Station on 28 November.
French Revolutionary War By February 1794 Resistance was cruising off the Cape of Good Hope with the 50-gun fourth rate HMS Centurion and 32-gun frigate HMS Orpheus. There they rendezvoused with the 74-gun ship of the line HMS Suffolk, the flagship of Commodore Peter Rainier and joined him in sailing to the East Indies as escort to a large convoy. By 5 May Resistance had reached the station, patrolling with Centurion and Orpheus. Pakenham spotted two ships off Round Island near Mauritius; Orpheus was the closest vessel and she chased the pair, coming up with one of them at 11:35 a.m. This enemy was the French 34-gun frigate Duguay Trouin, and Orpheus engaged her until 1:30 p.m. when Resistance and Centurion finally began to close in, being slower, at which point Duguay Trouin surrendered. Resistance then captured the 18-gun ship Revanche in the Sunda Strait in October.