The Case of HMS Stork and HMS West Florida - a podcast by Aj Van Slyke

HMS Stork and HMS West Florida were merely two Royal Naval vessels dispatched to the Pensacola Station from 1777 to 1781.
HMS West Florida was purchased in 1777 and named after the colony it was sent to protect. The name was chosen as a means of distinguistion from the HMS Florida Sloop and HMS Florida schooner. West Florida lost the Battle of Lake Ponchartrain, in 1779, to the American ship Morris. It is rumored and very likely that the crew of Morris sold West Florida to the Spanish in New Orleans where the ship was made Galvez’s flagship, Galveztown.
HMS Stork was purchased in 1777. By 1779, the ship was unserviceable in Pensacola. In April of 1780, the Stork was made unserviceable by a violent gale of wind and was likely immobile at the Deer Point Carreenage Station near modern Gulf Breeze, Florida. The 90ft. long sixth-rate sloop-of-war has never been located.

Cover chart by George Gauld in 1780 found at: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.gmd/g3932p.ar166300

Further episodes of AJV Archaeology

Further podcasts by Aj Van Slyke

Website of Aj Van Slyke