Black Prince-class ship of the line

The Black Prince-class ships of the line were a class of four 74-gun third rates built for the Royal Navy in the closing years of the Napoleonic War. The draught for this class of ship was essentially a reduced version of the captured Danish ship DANISH SHIP Christian VII.

Wellesley, while ordered to be built to this design and always officially so classified, was actually built to the design of and used the moulds of HMS Cornwallis (1813), a Vengeur/Armada-class ship previously built at Bombay; this was because the set of plans sent from the Navy Board and intended for the construction of Wellesley were lost en route to India when the ship carrying them was captured and burnt by the Americans. Wellesley later gained the distinction in 1940 of being the only ship of the line to be sunk by air attack.

Hawke was converted to screw propulsion in the 1850s when adapted as a 60-gun "blockship".

Ships

 * HMS Wellesley (1815)
 * Builder: Bombay Dockyard
 * Ordered: 6 January 1812
 * Begun: May 1813
 * Launched: 24 February 1815
 * Fate: Sunk in air attack by the Luftwaffe, 1940


 * HMS Black Prince (1816)
 * Builder: Woolwich Dockyard
 * Ordered: 14 August 1810
 * Begun: July 1814
 * Launched: 30 March 1816
 * Fate: Broken up, 1855


 * HMS Melville (1817)
 * Builder: Bombay Dockyard
 * Ordered: 6 September 1813
 * Begun: July 1815
 * Launched: 17 February 1817
 * Fate: Sold, 1873


 * HMS Hawke (1820)
 * Builder: Woolwich Dockyard
 * Ordered: 6 January 1812
 * Begun: April 1815
 * Launched: 16 March 1820
 * Fate: Broken up, 1865