HMS Captain (1743)


HMS Captain was a 70-gun third-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, built according to the 1733 proposals of the 1719 Establishment at Woolwich Dockyard, and launched on 14 April 1743.
Francis Light, founder of Penang, served for a few months as an apprentice on Captain around 1759.
In 1760, Captain was reduced to a 64-gun ship. Then in 1777 she was converted to serve as a storeship and renamed Buffalo.
Although a storeship, Buffalo shared, with, and, in the proceeds from s capture of the 12-gun French privateer Comte de Maurepas, on 3 August 1780.
In 1781, with 60 guns back on board, although she only had 18-pounders on the lower deck, she participated in the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War at the Battle of Dogger Bank.
Buffalo returned to the role of storeship until she was broken up in 1783.