HMS Sheerness (1743)

HMS Sheerness was a 24-gun sixth rate frigate of the Royal Navy launched in 1743. Commanded by Captain O'Brian, she served on patrol duties in the North Sea during the [Jacobite rising of 1745|1745 Jacobitism|Jacobite Rising].
In November 1745, she captured a French ship carrying supplies to Montrose, along with a number of Jacobite officers. They included Charles Radclyffe, de jure Earl of Derwentwater, who was executed at Tower Hill on 8 December 1746.
In the Skirmish of Tongue on 26 March 1746, Sheerness chased the Jacobite Le Prince Charles, formerly, into the Kyle of Tongue. Its crew disembarked, taking with them £13,000 in gold intended to help finance the Rising, but were intercepted and forced to surrender by government militia.
In 1752, she was equipped with Hales ventilators, worked by a windmill. During the Seven Years' War, she captured the French merchant-ship Auguste off Spain on 18 August 1756; sold to British merchants and renamed 'Augusta', it was wrecked carrying French passengers returning from Quebec to France in 1761.
She was sold in 1768.