Name HMS Resource Laid down November 1777 Construction started November 1777 | Ordered 30 September 1777 Commissioned July 1778 Launched 10 August 1778 | |
Completed 2 October 1778 (at Deptford Dockyard) | ||
HMS Resource was a 28-gun Enterprise-class sixth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy. She was launched in 1778 and sold for breaking up in 1816.
Career
Resource was first commissioned in July 1778 under the command of Captain Patrick Fotheringham.
On 19 April 1781 Resource recaptured the 20-gun post ship Unicorn, which the French frigate Andromaque had captured on 4 September 1780. Resource had reached Cape Blaise by noon and at 2pm spotted a strange sail. By 4:30 Resource was close enough that both vessels began to exchange fire. After an hour and a half, the French vessel struck. She turned out to be Unicorn, and armed with twenty 9-pounder guns and eight 12-pounder carronades. She had a crew of 181 men under the command of Chevalier de St. Ture. In the engagement, Resource lost 15 men killed and 30 wounded; Unicorn lost eight men killed and 30 wounded, four of whom died later.
Ten crew members were drowned in October 1799 when the ship's boat foundered in The Downs while returning to Resource after a journey to the shore. The dead included the captain of marines and the ship's purser.
Because Resource served in the navy's Egyptian campaign (8 March to 2 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.