HMS Resistance was a 44-gun fifth-rate Roebuck-class ship of the Royal Navy launched in 1782. Based on the design of HMS Roebuck, the class was built for use off the coast of North America during the American Revolutionary War. Commissioned by Captain James King, Resistance served on the West Indies Station for the rest of the war. She captured the 24-gun corvette La Coquette on 2 March 1783 and then went on in the same day to participate in the unsuccessful Battle of Grand Turk alongside Horatio Nelson. Resistance then went for a refit in Jamaica, during which time King fell ill and was replaced by Captain Edward O'Bryen. O'Bryen commanded Resistance until March 1784 when she was paid off. In 1791 she was recommissioned as a troop ship, but was converted back into a warship in 1793 at the start of the French Revolutionary War, under Captain Edward Pakenham.
Resistance was sent to serve on the East Indies Station, where she was present at the capture of the 34-gun frigate Duguay Trouin on 5 May 1794. She then participated in the capture of Malacca on 17 August 1795. She was similarly part of the force that captured Amboyna Island on 16 February 1796, and Banda Neira on 8 March. Continuing the campaign to capture Dutch possessions in the East Indies, Resistance took Kupang, Timor, on 10 June 1797, but the native population rebelled against the new temporary governor. Pakenham fired on the town and then sent a landing party in to regain control, destroying most of Kupang in the process.
On 21 July 1798 Resistance cut out a Malay merchant sloop, and after ascertaining the legal ownership of the vessel, sailed to Bangka Strait to return her to her captain. Arriving on 23 July, she anchored in the evening. At 1 a.m. on 24 July she suddenly caught fire and exploded, killing 332 people. Of the thirteen survivors, only four successfully reached Sumatra on a makeshift raft. Enslaved by local pirates, they were eventually rescued by the Sultan of Lingga.
Design and construction
Resistance was a 44-gun, 18-pounder . The class was a revival of the design used to construct the fifth-rate HMS Roebuck in 1769, by Sir Thomas Slade. The ships, while classified as fifth-rates, were not frigates because they carried two gun decks, of which a frigate would have only one. Roebuck was designed as such to provide the extra firepower a ship of two decks could bring to warfare but with a much lower draught and smaller profile. From 1751 to 1776 only two ships of this type were built for the Royal Navy because it was felt that they were anachronistic, with the lower (and more heavily armed) deck of guns being so low as to be unusable in anything but the calmest of waters. In the 1750s the cruising role of the 44-gun two deck ship was taken over by new 32- and 36-gun frigates, leaving the type almost completely obsolete.
When the American Revolutionary War began in 1776 a need was found for heavily armed ships that could fight in the shallow coastal waters of North America, where two-decked third-rates could not safely sail, and so the Roebuck class of nineteen ships, alongside the similar Adventure class, was ordered to the specifications of the original ships to fill this need. The frigate classes that had overtaken the 44-gun ship as the preferred design for cruisers were at this point still mostly armed with 9- and 12-pounder guns, and it was expected that the class's heavier 18-pounders would provide them with an advantage over these vessels. Frigates with larger armaments would go on to be built by the Royal Navy later on in the American Revolutionary Wars, but these ships were highly expensive and so Resistance and her brethren continued to be built as a cheaper alternative.
While most of Roebucks design was carried over to the new ships, some aspects were changed to reflect the changes in technology that had occurred in the passing years. Roebuck and the ships of the class ordered before 1782 were armed with twenty-two 9-pounder guns on their upper decks, but in that year the class was rearmed with more powerful 12-pounders, the same year Resistance was launched. As well as this change in armament, all ships laid down after the first four of the class had the double level of stern windows removed and replaced with a single level of windows, moving the style of the ships closer to that of a true frigate.