HMS Janus (1778)

HMS Janus was a 44-gun Roebuck-class fifth rate of the Royal Navy.

Design
Janus was a 44-gun, 18-pounder Roebuck-class ship. 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 1775 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 War, but these ships were highly expensive and so Janus and her brethren continued to be built as a cheaper alternative.

Construction
Janus, as the fourth ship built to the design, closely followed the parameters as originally set out for Roebuck in 1769 while later ships of the class differed from the design. While Janus and the other early ships of the class had two levels of stern windows, there was only ever one level of cabins behind them.

All but one ship of the class were contracted out to civilian dockyards for construction, and the contract for Janus was given to Robert Batson at Limehouse. The ship was ordered on 24 July 1776, laid down on 9 August the same year and launched on 14 May 1778 with the following dimensions: 140 ft along the gun deck, 115 ft at the keel, with a beam of 37 ft and a depth in the hold of 16 ft. Her draught, which made the class so valued in the American Revolutionary War, was 10 ft forward and 14 ft aft. She measured 883 $80/94$ tons burthen. The fitting out process for Janus was completed on 11 August at Deptford Dockyard. Her construction and fitting out cost in total £18,096.

Janus received an armament of twenty 18-pounder long guns on her lower deck, with twenty-two 9-pounders on the upper deck. These were complemented by two 6-pounders on the forecastle; the quarterdeck was unarmed. The ship was to have a crew of 280 men, which was increased to 300 in 1783. She was named on 27 August 1776 after the mythological two-headed keeper of the portals of heaven Janus.

History
From May 1780 she was under the command of Captain Horatio Nelson, though he was superseded by September that year.

In 1788 Janus was converted to a storeship and renamed Dromedary.

In 1793 Dromedary was under the command of Captain Sandford Tatham

Dromedary was at Plymouth on 20 January 1795 and so shared in the proceeds of the detention of the Dutch naval vessels, East Indiamen, and other merchant vessels that were in port on the outbreak of war between Britain and the Netherlands.

Loss
HMS Dromedary was wrecked on the Parasol Rocks, Trinidad on 10 August 1800. Her entire complement survived.