HMS Looe

3D Model

HMS Looe was built in 1741 in the Thomas Snelgrove shipyard in the Limehouse district of London and launched into the Thames River on December 29, 1741. Measuring 124 feet long by 35 feet in breadth and equipped with 44 cannons, Looe was classed as a 5th rate frigate. By July 1742, Looe was involved in efforts to combat Spanish privateers homeported at Vigo on the northwest coast of Spain. In 1743, Captain Ashby Utting took command for ship’s assignment to the Caribbean and Western Atlantic to patrol the straits of Florida and harass Spanish naval and merchant vessels. 

En route to safe harbor with a prize, officer of the watch Master Robert Bishop and the lead-line crew went to prepare for another sounding when they observed Looe fast approaching ‘white water’ (breaking waves), meaning depths much too shallow for a deep draft warship. Seeing the whitewater, Bishop sounded the alarm but it was too late, the ship struck near its stern.