HMS Cambridge was an 80-gun third-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, designed by Sir Joseph Allin and built at Deptford Dockyard by Adam Hayes to the draught specified by the 1745 Establishment as amended in 1750, and launched on 21 October 1755.
The launch of HMS Cambridge, left, in 1755 (with HMS Royal George shown fictitiously, right).
The bombardment of Morro Castle on Havana – Lindsay is being rowed out from Trent to take command of Cambridge, right
Deptford Dockyard was an important naval dockyard and base at Deptford on the River Thames, operated by the Royal Navy from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. It built and maintained warships for 350 years, and many significant events and ships have been associated with it.
The yard in its heyday. The launch of the 80-gun HMS Cambridge from the Great Dock in 1755, depicted by John Cleveley the Elder. In the foreground a first rate warship rides at anchor, while another warship nears completion on the slipway in the centre background.
Painting of the Dockyard by Joseph Farington, c.1794, showing (left to right along the shore): - Officers' houses & offices - The double dry dock (and beyond it the smithery) - Quadrangular Great Storehouse - A pair of shipbuilding slips - Wet dock (or basin) - Shipbuilding slip - Mast houses and mast pond - Boat house - New mast house and pond (See plan below for further details).
Tudor date stone from the Grand Storehouse, marked 'A°X' [in the Year of Christ] and '1513', either side of the royal cypher of Henry VIII.
HMS St Albans being floated out of the Great Dock onto the Thames at Deptford in 1747 (depicted by John Cleveley the Elder). Also shown are the Master Shipwright's House (built in 1705, left) and the Great Storehouse (rebuilt by 1739, right).