Service History
Her first commission was in the Irish Sea where she served from 1647 to 1650. She took part in the First Anglo-Dutch War from 1652-4 and was engaged in the naval battles of Dungeness, Portland, the Gabbard, and Texel.
From June 1655 to July 1656, Dragon served in the Mediterranean Fleet, and then in the English Channel.
In the Second Anglo-Dutch War, she took part in the Battle of Lowestoft and then in the Four Days' Battle. Following the end of the War, she is known to served in the Mediterranean once more, from 1669-1672. In May 1672 she took part in an engagement with Algerine pirates.
The Third Anglo-Dutch War saw Dragon back in home waters, engaging two Dutch ships off Bury Head at some time during this period. In 1674-7 1682-7, and 1686-9 she is again known to have been in the Mediterranean, on the last occasion serving as flagship for Henry Killigrew.
By 1677 her armament had been increased to 46 guns. In 1690, during the Nine Years' War, Dragon was rebuilt at Deptford Dockyard by Fisher Harding as a 46-gun fourth rate ship of the line. In 1691 and 1692 she is recorded in the Irish Sea and the Channel, and went to the West Indies in 1693. On 12 May 1694 she captured the French ship Diligente. Later in the Nine Years' War, she served in the Mediterranean (1696) and at Dunkirk (1697).
The War of the Spanish Succession also involved Dragon, the ship seeing action in 1702 as part of a fleet under Cloudesley Shovell, then serving in the Channel Fleet from 1703-6.
She was rebuilt for a second time in 1707 at the Nelson Dock as a fourth rate of 46-54 guns. She went on to serve on the Dutch Coast in 1708, and Newfoundland in 1709.
Read more about this topic: HMS Dragon (1647)
Famous quotes containing the words service and/or history:
“Night City was like a deranged experiment in Social Darwinism, designed by a bored researcher who kept one thumb permanently on the fast-forward button. Stop hustling and you sank without a trace, but move a little too swiftly and you’d break the fragile surface tension of the black market; either way, you were gone ... though heart or lungs or kidneys might survive in the service of some stranger with New Yen for the clinic tanks.”
—William Gibson (b. 1948)
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)