HMS Irresistible
Encyclopedia
Four ships of the Royal Navy
have been named HMS Irresistible. A fifth was planned but later renamed:
was a 74-gun third rate ship of the line
launched in 1782 and broken up in 1806.
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...
have been named HMS Irresistible. A fifth was planned but later renamed:
was a 74-gun third rate ship of the line
Ship of the line
A ship of the line was a type of naval warship constructed from the 17th through the mid-19th century to take part in the naval tactic known as the line of battle, in which two columns of opposing warships would manoeuvre to bring the greatest weight of broadside guns to bear...
launched in 1782 and broken up in 1806.
- HMS IrresistibleHMS Swiftsure (1787)HMS Swiftsure was a 74-gun third rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy. She spent most of her career serving with the British, except for a brief period when she was captured by the French during the Napoleonic Wars...
was a prison shipPrison shipA prison ship, historically sometimes called a prison hulk, is a vessel used as a prison, often to hold convicts awaiting transportation to penal colonies. This practice was popular with the British government in the 18th and 19th centuries....
, launched as in 1787. She was captured by the French in 1801, and recaptured in the Battle of TrafalgarBattle of TrafalgarThe Battle of Trafalgar was a sea battle fought between the British Royal Navy and the combined fleets of the French Navy and Spanish Navy, during the War of the Third Coalition of the Napoleonic Wars ....
in 1805. She was renamed HMS Irresistible in 1806 and was broken up in 1816. was a 80-gun screw propelled second rate launched in 1859. She was used for harbour service from 1869 and was sold in 1894. was a Formidable-classFormidable class battleshipThe Royal Navy's Formidable class battleships was an eight-ship class of pre-dreadnoughts designed by Sir William White and built in the late 1890s...
battleshipBattleshipA battleship is a large armored warship with a main battery consisting of heavy caliber guns. Battleships were larger, better armed and armored than cruisers and destroyers. As the largest armed ships in a fleet, battleships were used to attain command of the sea and represented the apex of a...
launched in 1898 and sunk by a mine in 1915. - HMS IrresistibleHMS Ark Royal (R09)HMS Ark Royal was an Audacious-class aircraft carrier of the Royal Navy and, when she was decommissioned in 1978, was the Royal Navy's last remaining conventional catapult and arrested-landing aircraft carrier...
was to have been an Audacious classAudacious class aircraft carrierThe Audacious class aircraft carriers were a class of ship proposed by the British government in the 1930s - 1940s.- History :The Audacious class was originally designed as an expansion of the Implacable class with double storied hangars...
aircraft carrierAircraft carrierAn aircraft carrier is a warship designed with a primary mission of deploying and recovering aircraft, acting as a seagoing airbase. Aircraft carriers thus allow a naval force to project air power worldwide without having to depend on local bases for staging aircraft operations...
. She was renamed HMS Ark RoyalHMS Ark Royal (R09)HMS Ark Royal was an Audacious-class aircraft carrier of the Royal Navy and, when she was decommissioned in 1978, was the Royal Navy's last remaining conventional catapult and arrested-landing aircraft carrier...
before being launched in 1950.