HMS Grenville (1754)

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

HMS Grenville, was a schooner (later re-rigged as a brig) built in Marblehead, Massachusetts,^[2] and originally named Sally. The ship was purchased and renamed Grenville (for the British Prime Minister George Grenville) by Thomas Graves, Governor of Newfoundland on 7 August 1763 in Newfoundland.^[1] From 1763 to 1767 English surveyor and explorer James Cook commanded Grenville, his first independent command.^[3]

History
Name	Grenville
Launched	1754
Great Britain
Name	HMS Grenville
Fate	Broken up in March 1775
General characteristics
Tons burthen	67 tons [1]
Armament	12 guns[1]

Over the winter of 1764–65 Grenville sailed to Deptford Dockyard for a refit. She was re-rigged as a brig, at Cook's request. Among many advantages, the greater maneuverability of a brig was important for surveying work. (It is a common misconception that a schooner of that era sailed better to windward than a brig.)^[4][5] Grenville left Deptford on 22 April 1765 and sighted Cape Race on 31 May.^[6]

For each summer season of Cook's command, Grenville sailed from Deptford to Newfoundland and Labrador to survey the coastal waters. Much of the area that he covered had not been surveyed in any way beforehand. Cook employed new surveying techniques, using shore-based theodolites to record the position of a ship's boat that made a running survey of depths. This avoided many of the inaccuracies of calculating the position of the surveying boat from a ship whose position might not be totally accurately known. In 1766, Cook was able to make an exact fix of longitude from observations of a solar eclipse.^[7]

At the end of the 1767 surveying season, as in other years, Cook sailed HMS Grenville back to Deptford. Encountering a "hard storm" (in Cook's words) in the entrance to the Thames, Cook anchored off the Nore lighthouse. The yards and topmasts were struck^[a] to reduce the effect of the wind on the anchored ship, but the cable to the largest anchor broke, she dragged the second anchor and went aground on a shoal. By midnight, with the storm continuing and the ship hard aground and listing, Cook and his crew abandoned in the boats and went ashore. As the storm abated, with assistance from the Navy yard in Sheerness, Cook and his crew returned to Grenville and lightened her by throwing overboard ballast and any unnecessary material. After two days, she was afloat again and being refitted with the necessary spars to re-rig the ship so that she could be taken into Deptford.^[8][9]

In 1768, Cook left Grenville to begin his first circumnavigation of the world on HMS Endeavour.

In 1770 Grenville brought troops to Tobago from Barbados and they, together with troops from Fort Granby, helped suppress a slave rebellion.^[10]

The ship was broken up in March 1775.^[11]

Notes

1. "Striking" a topmast means to lower it down to a stowed position on the lower mast. This reduces the windage on the rig. In the incident with Grenville, Cook's accounts states that the topmasts and yards were later sent down to the deck, so getting them to an even lower position, further reducing windage aloft and lowering the centre of gravity of the spars.