HMS Resolution (1771) - Later Service and Loss

Later Service and Loss

In 1780, Resolution was converted into an armed transport and sailed for the East Indies in March 1781. She was captured by the Sphinx and Annibal of de Suffren's squadron on 9 June 1782. After the action at Negapatam on 6 July 1782, Resolution was sent to Manila for wood, biscuit and rigging, and to press any seaman she found there. She sailed on 22 July 1782 and was never seen again.

On 5 June 1783 de Suffren wrote that Resolution had last been seen in the Sunda Strait, and that he suspected she had either foundered or fallen into the hands of the English. An item from the Melbourne Argus, 25 February 1879, said that she ended her days as a Portuguese coal-hulk at Rio de Janeiro, but this has never been confirmed. Viscount Galway, a Governor-General of New Zealand, owned a ship's figurehead described as that of Resolution, but a photograph of it does not agree with the figurehead depicted in Holman's famous watercolour of her.

Alternatively, in 1789 she may have been renamed Général Conway, in November 1790 Amis Réunis, and in 1792 Liberté. In Martin Dugard's biography of Cook, Farther Than Any Man, published in 2001, states: "Her fate, by some cruel twist of historical irony, is as incredible as Endeavour's - she was sold to the French, rechristened La Liberte, and transformed into a whaler, then ended her days rotting in Newport Harbor. She settled to the bottom just a mile from Endeavour." (p.281, Epilogue)

However, there is a report from 1881, that the British Consul in Alexandria looking from the Ras el-Tin Palace pointed out the Resolution in the harbour to William N. Armstrong who attended the Hawaiian King David Kalākaua during his trip around the world.