HMS Cambridge (1815)

HMS Cambridge was an 80-gun third rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, launched on 23 June 1815 at Deptford Dockyard. She was built to the lines of the Danish ship Christian VII, which had been captured in 1807 at the Second Battle of Copenhagen.

Service
She saw little action early in her life, due to the end of the Napoleonic Wars. However, in the journal of Thomas Reed Stavers, she is recorded as being at Callao Roads, under Captain Thomas Maling, on 3 July and on 4/5 September 1824, on the latter occasion sailing from Callao to 'the Island of Lorenzo' to avoid attacks by a Spanish gun boat.

Letters in the Foreign Office (FO 16/1) show that she sailed to the Americas under Captain Maling in 1823. Aboard was the first British diplomatic delegation to Chile: R. Nuggent, Henry William Rouse and Matthew Carter.

By January 1840 she was out of commission at Sheerness, but on 31 January that year she was commissioned there under Captain Edward Barnard and from then until 26 January 1843 served as the head of a naval squadron in the Mediterranean. This squadron's actions included operations in the eastern Mediterranean on the coast of Syria, a bombardment of Beirut on 10 September, and blockading Alexandria, all as part of the 1840 combined Ottoman-British campaign against Mehmet Ali.

Fate
On her return, she was again decommissioned and in ordinary at Devonport, until on 9 August 1856 when she was re-commissioned as 'the gunnery ship at Plymouth', under Captain Richard Strode Hewlett. In this role she saw four more captains (3 January 1857—1 April 1862 Arthur William Jerningham; 1 April 1862—20 April 1863 Captain Leopold George Heath; 20 April 1863—May 1867 Charles Joseph Frederick Ewart; May 1867—January 1869 Fitzgerald Algernon Charles Foley) before being scrapped in 1869. HMS Windsor Castle was renamed HMS Cambridge and replaced her as the gunnery ship.