HMS_Swiftsure_(1654)

HMS <i>Swiftsure</i> (1621)

HMS Swiftsure (1621)

Ship of the line of the Royal Navy

For other ships with the same name, see HMS Swiftsure.

HMS Swiftsure was a 42-gun great ship of the English Royal Navy, built by Andrew Burrell at Deptford and launched in 1621.[1]

Quick Facts History, England ...

She was rebuilt in 1654 at Woolwich by Christopher Pett as a 60-gun third rate ship of the line.[2]

In May 1660, during the English restoration, she seems to have carried Henry Stuart, Duke of Gloucester from Scheveningen to Dover.[3]

She was the flagship of Vice-Admiral Sir William Berkeley at the Four Days' Battle against the Dutch in 1666.[4] Berkeley led the van of the English fleet on the first day of the battle, 1 June, but outsailed his squadron into the midst of the Dutch, and was surrounded. After a fierce battle in which Berkeley was killed, Swiftsure was captured.[2][4] The Dutch renamed her the Oudshoorn (70 cannon) and changed the quartergalleries to hide her identity. She fought in the Battle of Solebay in 1672 under the command of Thomas Tobias.

Notes

  1. [1]
    Lavery, Ships of the Line vol.1, p158.
  2. [2]
    Lavery, Ships of the Line vol.1, p160.
  3. [3]
    Pepys (1893) vol.I p157
  4. [4]
    "Berkeley, Sir William (1639–1666)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. 2004. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/2224. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)

References


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