HMS Agamemnon 1809
.jpg){kind=link}
Marker: recorded wreck position (Age of Sail).
Key facts
| Name | HMS Agamemnon | Wikidata label |
|---|---|---|
| Year lost | 1809 | English Wikipedia lead text (year following a loss verb, parsed) |
| Era | Age of Sail | derived from year |
| Ship type | third-rate | Wikidata P31 instance of |
| Cause of loss | Storm or weather | Keyword match in English Wikipedia lead sentence |
| Nationality / flag | United Kingdom | Wikidata P137 operator → P17 country |
| Operator | Royal Navy | Wikidata P137 operator |
| Sea / ocean | Río de la Plata | Natural Earth marine areas (public domain), point-in-polygon |
| Nearest coast | Uruguay | Natural Earth (public domain); approx. 7 km from land |
| Position | -34.9331, -54.9811 | Wikidata P625 coordinate location (CC0) |
About the wreck
HMS Agamemnon was a 64-gun third-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy. She saw service in the American War of Independence and French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars and fought in many major naval battles. She is remembered as Horatio Nelson's favourite ship, and she was named after the mythical ancient Greek king Agamemnon, the first ship of the Royal Navy to bear the name.
The future Lord Nelson served as Agamemnon's captain from January 1793 for three years and three months, during which time she saw considerable service in the Mediterranean. After Nelson's departure, she was involved in the infamous 1797 mutinies at Spithead and the Nore, and in 1801, she was present at the first Battle of Copenhagen, but she ran aground before being able to enter the action.
Despite Nelson's fondness for the ship, she frequently needed repair and refitting and would likely have been hulked or scrapped in 1802 had the war with France not recommenced. She fought at the Battle of Trafalgar on 21 October 1805 as part of Nelson's weather column, where she forced the surrender of the Spanish four-decker Santísima Trinidad. Agamemnon's later career was served in South American waters off Brazil.
Location
- Recorded position: -34.9331, -54.9811 (Wikidata P625 coordinate location (CC0); may be approximate)
- Sea / ocean: Río de la Plata
- Nearest coast: Uruguay
Wreck positions on this site are for interest only and are not for navigation. Many wrecks are war graves or legally protected: never disturb human remains or remove artefacts, and check local law before diving.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article HMS Agamemnon (1781) (revision 1378557066), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section; condensed by selecting paragraphs and trimming at sentence boundaries; citations and formatting removed. No text added. This excerpt is available under the same licence.
Wreck facts from Wikidata (CC0).
Nearby wrecks
- Admiral Graf Spee 1939 · 120 km
Browse more: South America wrecks · Age of Sail