Name HMS Kent Laid down October 1795 Construction started October 1795 Weight 1,964 tons Builder Blackwall Yard | Ordered 10 June 1795 Fate Broken up, 1881 Launched 17 January 1798 Draft 7 m | |
Honours and
awards Naval General Service Medal with clasp "Egypt" Class and type Ajax-class ship of the line | ||
HMS Kent was a 74-gun third-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, launched on 17 January 1798 at Blackwall Yard.
Contents
Career
On 9 May 1801 Kent, Hector and Cruelle unsuccessfully chased the French corvette Heliopolis, which eluded them and slipped into Alexandria. Because Kent served in the navy's Egyptian campaign (8 March to 8 September 1801), her officers and crew qualified for the clasp "Egypt" to the Naval General Service Medal that the Admiralty authorised in 1850 for all surviving claimants.
On 13 December 1809 350 sailors and 250 marines from Kent,and two other 74-gun third rates, Cambrian and Ajax, attacked Palamós. (The sloops Sparrowhawk and Minstrel covered the landing.) The landing party destroyed six of eight merchant vessels with supplies for the French army at Barcelona, as well as their escorts, a national ketch of 14 guns and 60 men and two xebecs of three guns and thirty men each. The vessels were lying inside the mole under the protection of 250 French troops, a battery of two 24-pounders, and a 13" mortar in a battery on a commanding height. Although the attack was successful, the withdrawal was not. The British lost 33 men killed, 89 wounded, and 86 taken prisoner, plus one seaman who took the opportunity to desert.
Fate
Kent became a sheer hulk in 1856, and was broken up in 1881.