HMS Swallow was a 14-gun sloop of the Royal Navy. Commissioned in 1745, she initially served in home waters as a convoy escort and cruiser before sailing to join the East Indies Station in 1747. There she served in the squadron of Rear-Admiral Edward Boscawen, taking part in an aborted invasion of Mauritius and the Siege of Pondicherry. In 1755 Swallow returned home to join the Downs Station, as part of which she fought at the Raid on St Malo, Raid on Cherbourg, and Battle of Saint Cast in 1758. She was also present when the French fleet broke out of Brest prior to the Battle of Quiberon Bay in 1759.
Swallow was converted into an exploration ship in 1766, and she sailed under Philip Carteret as part of an expedition to the Pacific Ocean. Split from her companion vessel when the expedition reached Cape Pillar off Desolación Island in Chile, Carteret continued on with Swallow despite the ship not being fully equipped for a solo voyage. Sailing on a north-west course, Swallow went on to discover the Pitcairn Islands and New Ireland while battling a lack of supplies and severe bouts of sickness. The ship reached Batavia towards the end of 1767, where she underwent a refit. Swallow returned to England in early 1769, and was sold later that year.
Design and construction
Swallow was a 6-pounder, sloop. Her class was designed by the shipwright Jacob Acworth in 1743 as a more heavily gunned variant of sloop to replace earlier classes, such as the , that were armed with 4-pounders. The Merlin class was the first class of sloop to be armed with 6-pounders. The original order of ships for the class saw only two sloops constructed, and . While they were established as 10-gun vessels, they were actually built with 7 gun ports on each side, providing them with the capability to hold a larger armament. The large majority of the vessels were rigged as snows. The design became the standard for the Admiralty, and between 1744 and 1746 a further nineteen sloops were ordered to the Merlin class. It is possible that some of the class were actually built to the design of the , another class designed in 1743, but the dimensions of the sloops suggests that the basis of their construction was the Merlin class. The sloops were the largest single-design class of ship in the Royal Navy when they were procured, and continued to be so until the advent of the Swan-class ship-sloop in the 1770s.
The first Swallow of the Merlin class was wrecked in the Bahamas in December 1744, and another ship of the class was given the same name to replace her. With all ships of the class constructed by civilian shipyards, this new Swallow was contracted out to Henry Bird of Rotherhithe on 5 April 1745. She was laid down in May, named on 11 December, and launched on 14 December with the following dimensions: along the upper deck, at the keel, with a beam of and a depth in the hold of . The first two ships of the class had been fitted with a platform in their hold which severely decreased the depth of their holds, but this feature had been discontinued in most of their successors. However Swallow and another sloop of the class, HMS Raven, had a much shallower depth in the hold than their compatriots, suggesting that they too were fitted with this platform. She measured 278 tons burthen.
Swallow was fitted out at Deptford Dockyard, being completed on 12 February 1746. She carried ten 6-pounder guns and fourteen half-pounder swivel guns, but in 1748 the extra gun ports each ship had been built with were utilised, with four more 6-pounders being added to her armament. Reflecting this increase in the number of guns needing to be served, her crew number was increased at the same time from 110 to 125. In 1755 she was converted from a sloop into a ship-sloop alongside , following the previous conversions of Raven, , , and . This added a third mast to Swallow, providing her with heightened mobility and stability.
Service East Indies Station Swallow was commissioned by Commander John Rowzier in December 1745. She was initially tasked with cruising, and with protecting local convoys. She arrived at Hamburg with a convoy of merchantmen from Hull in the same month, but was subsequently forced to stay in the port for four weeks because changing winds stopped her from leaving; she finally returned to England on 7 January 1746. In November 1747 she was sent to serve on the East Indies Station. While on station there, Rowzier was replaced by Commander Richard Clements towards the start of 1748. Intending to capture Mauritius from the French, Rear-Admiral Edward Boscawen sailed with his squadron, Swallow included, from the Cape of Good Hope on 8 May. The squadron reached its destination on 23 June. The ships anchored for the night in the nearby Turtle Bay. On the next day they were fired upon by a number of French coastal gun batteries which would need to be destroyed before the invasion could take place.
The 60-gun fourth-rate was then sent to give covering fire to Swallow and the 44-gun frigate as they sailed along the coast. The plan was to reconnoitre the coastline to find weaknesses and suitable landing points, but as the ships neared the French they were fired upon by eight batteries and discovered that the main harbour was defended by a large warship, with thirteen more ships within. Small boats were sent in along the coast to check for other weaknesses in the French defences, but it was decided that any invasion would come at too high a cost. The squadron left for the Coromandel Coast on 26 June and arrived at Fort St. David on 29 July.
Boscawen then decided that an attack on Pondicherry should be made. Swallow was sent with Pembroke and the 50-gun fourth-rate to join the 58-gun fourth-rate off Pondicherry on 3 August, where they were tasked with mapping out the area ready for invasion and blockading the town. The army began their attack on 8 August and Clements vacated his post in Swallow on 29 September, upon his promotion to post-captain, while this was still ongoing. By 30 September little progress had been made despite the assistance of frequent bombardments of the defences by the squadron, and with the monsoon season approaching the invasion was abandoned. The army began its march back to Fort St. David on 6 October.
Commander Andrew Cockburn arrived as the replacement for Clements on 9 October. While sailing off the Coromandel Coast on 14 April 1749 Swallow was dismasted in a large storm, but despite this she managed to reach Fort St. David after it had ended. On 1 September Cockburn and Commander Henry Speke switched commands, and the latter commanded Swallow until 22 January 1753, when she was paid off (ending Swallows current commission). The ship was surveyed on 12 April but stayed in ordinary (a form of mothballing) until June 1755 when she was sent to Deptford for a repair, and to be converted into a ship-sloop. This work cost £3,370 and was completed in November of the same year. While undergoing her conversion Swallow was recommissioned by Commander Henry Angel on 24 July, and she afterwards joined the Downs Station.
Downs Station and Western Squadron In late February 1756 Swallow was at Sheerness Dockyard when seven of her crew stole her yawl and deserted; they were seen in Hollesley Bay on 21 February but successfully escaped a Customs sloop by beaching the yawl and running inland. On 23 August Angel was promoted to post-captain and replaced by Commander John Lendrick, and the ship was sent orders to go cruising. In doing so she captured the French 10-gun privateer Le Faucon on 4 May 1757 while in company with the 8-gun sloop HMS Cruizer and the armed cutter Hazard. Swallow subsequently fought at the Raid on St Malo in June 1758, the Raid on Cherbourg in the following August, and the Battle of Saint Cast in September, only the latter of which was unsuccessful. Lendrick left Swallow on 11 September and on 3 January 1759 Commander Francis Banks assumed command of the ship. Swallow was subsequently tasked with protecting convoys of supply ships that were being sent out to Admiral Sir Edward Hawke's fleet off Brest. On 15 November she sighted the French fleet of the Comte de Conflans as it escaped from Brest on its way to its encounter with Hawke at the Battle of Quiberon Bay on 20 November.
Swallow continued under Banks until 14 April 1760 when he was promoted to post-captain and replaced by Lieutenant Charles Feilding, and the ship then joined the Western Squadron based out of Plymouth Dockyard. Feilding handed over to Commander James Cranston on 27 August, and under him Swallow captured the French 4-gun privateer Le Vautour on 9 January 1761 while in company with the 28-gun frigate . Beginning a run of prizetaking, Swallow then captured the letter of marque Le Tigre on 12 February, having been sent to cruise off Oléron. Some time in mid-February Cranston began to intermittently be replaced in command of Swallow by Lieutenant Robert Brice, who captured the 10-gun privateer snow Le Sultan off Bayonne on 28 February.
In March, and with Cranston in command, Swallow was readying to leave port to patrol the English Channel when her crew refused to raise her anchor, demanding "Money, money". Cranston threatened to hang the mutineers, and eventually succeeded in getting the crew to raise anchor after the ringleaders were removed. While it was agreed that the majority of the crew had been part of the action, only six men were brought to court martial. Two were sentenced to be hanged, but the executions were commuted after it was discovered that they had been encouraged in their actions by Swallows boatswain. The naval historian Brian Lavery argues that because of this, the event cannot be described as a true "general mutiny". On 3 July Brice was promoted to commander, assuming full command of Swallow and staying in her until he left to command the 8-gun bomb vessel on 19 October; he was replaced by Commander James Mackenzie on 7 April 1762. On 1 May Swallow was the lead escort to the ship that conveyed Lord Halifax, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, from Dublin to Parkgate in Cheshire. Swallow served under Mackenzie until after the Seven Years' War ended, when she was paid off on 24 May 1763.
Exploration ship Outward journey
The ship was surveyed on 17 August 1763 and subsequently received a small repair at Chatham Dockyard between February and August 1766, at the cost of £3,915. On 1 July she was recommissioned by Commander Philip Carteret as an exploration ship for the Pacific Ocean. The expedition, commanded by Captain Samuel Wallis in the 24-gun frigate , was setting out to better John Byron's earlier attempt, which Carteret had been a part of and which had discovered nothing. Swallow was chosen as a consort ship for Dolphin at short notice because the return of the 16-gun sloop , Dolphins expected consort, had been delayed because she was undergoing repairs in the West Indies. When Carteret first arrived onboard Swallow, he considered the ship to be unfit for the expedition and asked for alterations to be made, but many of these were refused. Carteret wrote in his journal that the ship was "one of the worst, if not the very worst, of her kind; in his majesty's Navy, and was in every respects, but indifferently fitted out." The ship was much slower than Dolphin, and George Robertson, her master, called her "poor Dull Swall" and stated she could only sail two feet for every three Dolphin sailed.