HMS Hawk (1741)

Hawk was the second of three small, fast vessels designed by Surveyor of the Navy Jacob Acworth to guard merchant shipping in British home waters after the declaration of war against Spain in 1739.

[1][a] She was ordered in August 1740, to be constructed by contract by shipwrights Grevill and Whetstone on the waterfront at Limehouse on the River Thames, and was then fitted out, armed and commissioned at Deptford Dockyard.

She was built with seven pairs of gunports along her upper deck, but initially armed with only eight four-pounder cannons with the remaining ports left unused.

Twelve lightweight half-pounder swivel guns (anti-personnel weapons) were mounted on posts along the sides of the deck, and two more four-pounder cannons were added in 1744.

In 1745 she returned to her former station as a convoy escort in the Irish Sea, guarding merchant vessels approaching the British Isles.

The Limehouse waterfront, where Hawk was constructed in 1741. From a contemporary engraving by John Boydell .