HMS Swallow was a 14-gun Merlin-class sloop of the Royal Navy. Commissioned in 1745, she initially served in home waters as a convoy escort and cruiser before sailing to join the East Indies Station in 1747. There she served in the squadron of Rear-Admiral Edward Boscawen, taking part in an aborted invasion of Mauritius and the Siege of Pondicherry. In 1755 Swallow returned home to join the Downs Station, as part of which she fought at the Raid on St Malo, Raid on Cherbourg, and Battle of Saint Cast in 1758. She was also present when the French fleet broke out of Brest prior to the Battle of Quiberon Bay in 1759.
Swallow was converted into an exploration ship in 1766, and she sailed under Philip Carteret as part of an expedition to the Pacific Ocean. Split from her companion vessel when the expedition reached Cape Pillar off Desolación Island in Chile, Carteret continued on with Swallow despite the ship not being fully equipped for a solo voyage. Sailing on a north-west course, Swallow went on to discover the Pitcairn Islands and New Ireland while battling a lack of supplies and severe bouts of sickness. The ship reached Batavia towards the end of 1767, where she underwent a refit. Swallow returned to England in early 1769, and was sold later that year.
Design and construction
Swallow was a 6-pounder, Merlin-class sloop. Her class was designed by the shipwright Jacob Acworth in 1743 as a more heavily gunned variant of sloop to replace earlier classes, such as the Baltimore-class sloop, that were armed with 4-pounders. The Merlin class was the first class of sloop to be armed with 6-pounders. The original order of ships for the class saw only two sloops constructed, and . While they were established as 10-gun vessels, they were actually built with 7 gun ports on each side, providing them with the capability to hold a larger armament. The large majority of the vessels were rigged as snows. The design became the standard for the Admiralty, and between 1744 and 1746 a further nineteen sloops were ordered to the Merlin class. It is possible that some of the class were actually built to the design of the Hind-class sloop, another class designed in 1743, but the dimensions of the sloops suggests that the basis of their construction was the Merlin class. The sloops were the largest single-design class of ship in the Royal Navy when they were procured, and continued to be so until the advent of the Swan-class ship-sloop in the 1770s.
The first Swallow of the Merlin class was wrecked in the Bahamas in December 1744, and another ship of the class was given the same name to replace her. With all ships of the class constructed by civilian shipyards, this new Swallow was contracted out to Henry Bird of Rotherhithe on 5 April 1745. She was laid down in May, named on 11 December, and launched on 14 December with the following dimensions: along the upper deck, at the keel, with a beam of and a depth in the hold of . The first two ships of the class had been fitted with a platform in their hold which severely decreased the depth of their holds, but this feature had been discontinued in most of their successors. However Swallow and another sloop of the class, HMS Raven, had a much shallower depth in the hold than their compatriots, suggesting that they too were fitted with this platform. She measured 278 tons burthen.
Swallow was fitted out at Deptford Dockyard, being completed on 12 February 1746. She carried ten 6-pounder guns and fourteen half-pounder swivel guns, but in 1748 the extra gun ports each ship had been built with were utilised, with four more 6-pounders being added to her armament. Reflecting this increase in the number of guns needing to be served, her crew number was increased at the same time from 110 to 125. In 1755 she was converted from a sloop into a ship-sloop alongside , following the previous conversions of Raven, , , and . This added a third mast to Swallow, providing her with heightened mobility and stability.