HMS Drake (1741)
HMS Drake was an 8-gun snow-rigged sloop of the Royal Navy, launched in 1741 as the first of three Drake class sloops constructed for convoy duty during the Anglo-Spanish War of Jenkins' Ear from 1739 to 1742. After limited service off the Channel Islands, she was sailed to Gibraltar where she was wrecked in 1742 while under the temporary command of her first lieutenant. Construction Drake was the first of three small, fast vessels designed by Surveyor of the Navy Jacob Acworth to guard merchant convoys in British home waters after the declaration of war against Spain in 1739. She was ordered in June 1740, to be constructed by shipwright Thomas West in the civilian dockyard at Deptford. Her dimensions were in keeping with other vessels of her class with an overall length of , a beam of and measuring 206 tons burthen. She had two masts, square-rigged and supported by a trysail mast aft of the main mast. Although fitted with seven pairs of gunports along her upper deck, she was armed with only eight four-pounder cannons with the remaining ports left unused. Twelve lightweight half-pounder swivel guns were also mounted on the deck, and her complement was 80