HMS Carysfort (1766)

Print by Thomas Whitcombe depicting HMS Carysfort retaking Castor from the French on 29 May 1794
History
Great Britain
Name	HMS Carysfort
Namesake	John Proby, 1st Baron Carysfort, former Lord of the Admiralty
Ordered	4 & 20 February 1764
Builder	Sheerness Dockyard
Laid down	June 1764
Launched	23 August 1766
Completed	11 August 1767
Commissioned	June 1767
Honours and awards	Naval General Service Medal with clasp "Carysfort 29 May 1794"
Fate	Sold on 28 April 1813
General characteristics
Class and type	28-gun Coventry-class sixth-rate frigate
Tons burthen	58630⁄94 (bm)
Length	118 ft 4 in (36.1 m) (overall) 97 ft 3+1⁄2 in (29.7 m) (keel)
Beam	33 ft 8 in (10.3 m)
Depth of hold	10 ft 6 in (3.20 m)
Sail plan	Full-rigged ship
Complement	200
Armament	As built: Gun deck: 24 × 9-pounder guns QD: 4 × 3-pounder guns 12 × 1⁄2-pdr swivel guns From 1780: Gun deck: 24 × 9-pounder guns QD: 4 × 6-ppounder guns & 4 × 18-pounder carronades Fc: 2 × 18-pounder carronades From 1794: Upper deck: 24 × 9-pounder guns QD: 4 × 6-pounder guns & 4 × 24-pounder carronades Fc: 2 × 24-pounder carronades

HMS Carysfort was a 28-gun Coventry-class sixth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy. She served during the American War of Independence, the French Revolutionary and the Napoleonic Wars in a career that spanned over forty years.

She had a number of notable commanders during this period, and saw action in several single-ship actions against French and American opponents. She took several privateers during the American War of Independence, though one of her most notable actions was the recapture of Castor, a Royal Navy frigate that a French squadron had captured nearly three weeks earlier and a French prize crew was sailing to France. Carysfort engaged and forced the surrender of her larger opponent, restoring Castor to the British, though not without a controversy over the issue of prize money. Carysfort spent the later French Revolutionary and early Napoleonic Wars on stations in the East and later the West Indies. Carysfort returned to Britain in 1806 where she was laid up in ordinary. The Admiralty finally sold her in 1813.