HMS Centaur (1759)

Centaure was a 74-gun ship of the line of the French Navy, launched at Toulon in 1757.

The Royal Navy captured Centaure at the Battle of Lagos on 18 August 1759, and commissioned her as the Third Rate HMS Centaur.

Loss
In September 1782, the Centaur was one of the ships escorting prizes back to Britain from Jamaica, when she foundered during the 1782 Central Atlantic hurricane near the Newfoundland Banks. Captain John Nicholson Inglefield, along with eleven of his crew, survived the wreck in one of the ship's pinnaces, arriving at the Azores after sailing in an open boat for 16 days without compass quadrant or sail, and only two quart bottles of water; some 400 of her crew perished.