French ship Citoyen (1764)

History
France
Name: Citoyen
Namesake: "Citizen"
Ordered: May 1757
Builder: Brest
Laid down: July 1761
Launched: 27 August 1764
In service: December 1764
General characteristics
Class and type: Citoyen class ship of the line
Tonnage: 1,500 tons
Displacement: 3,000 tons
Length: 169½ French feet[1] (55.06 metres)
Beam: 43 French feet (13.97 metres)
Draught: 21 French feet (6.82 metres)
Propulsion: Sail
Complement: 715 men in wartime, 650 in peacetime, + 6/12 officers
Armament:
Armour: Timber

The Citoyen was a 74-gun ship of the line of the French Navy, lead ship of her class to a design by Joseph-Louis Ollivier. She was funded by a don des vaisseaux donation from the Bankers and General Treasurers of the Army.

Ordered in May 1757 as Cimeterre, the ship was renamed Citoyen on 20 January 1762. A launching attempt aborted on 10 August 1764, when she came to a halt on the ramp, and she was eventually set afloat 17 days later.

She took part in the Battle of Martinique (1780). In 1781, under Captain de Thy, she was appointed to the squadron of Admiral de Grasse and took part in the Battle of Fort Royal in April. On 24 August, along with Glorieux, she captured HMS Cormorant off Charleston. In September, she took part in the Battle of the Chesapeake on 5 September 1781, in the Battle of St Kitts on 25/26 January 1782 and the Battle of the Saintes on 12 April 1782.

In 1783, on returning to France, she was decommissioned, and was eventually broken up in 1791.

  1. ↑ Note that the (pre-metric) French foot was 6.575% longer than the equivalent British unit of measurement.
  • Naval Database
  • Roche, Jean-Michel (2005). Dictionnaire des bâtiments de la flotte de guerre française de Colbert à nos jours, 1671 - 1870. Group Retozel-Maury Millau. p. 116. ISBN 978-2-9525917-0-6. OCLC 165892922.
  • Winfield, Rif and Roberts, Stephen S., French Warships in the Age of Sail 1626-1786: Design, Construction, Careers and Fates. (Seaforth Publishing, 2017) ISBN 978-1-4738-9351-1.


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