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Gallery · Ship · SHP-006

Royal Fortune

Also recorded as: ex-Onslow (Royal African Company frigate, the last Royal Fortune)

Launched: Name first used 1720 (serial name across several vessels) To: Taken 10 February 1722, off Cape Lopez

The name Bartholomew Roberts gave in turn to several of his flagships. The last Royal Fortune was the Royal African Company frigate Onslow, taken in 1721 and mounted with 40 guns; she was captured by HMS Swallow in the action that killed Roberts. No wreck has been located.

Engraved plate. A pirate captain stands full length on a shore at the left, in a plumed tricorn hat and a long patterned coat, a sword raised in his right hand. Behind him two ships under sail fly dark flags close inshore, one flag bearing two small figures, with small boats on the water and a line of anchored ships along the coastline beyond. The engraved caption beneath names Captain Bartho. Roberts with two ships, the Royal Fortune and Ranger, in Whydah Road on the coast of Guiney; the signature B. Cole sculp sits at the lower right.
Engraved plate from Johnson's General History, 1724 Its own printed caption reads "Captain Bartho. Roberts with two Ships, Viz the Royal Fortune and Ranger, ... in Whydah Road on the coast of Guiney". A 1724 depiction of the ship, not a record of her: an artefact of the legend, not a likeness. From A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates, London, 1724.

There was never one Royal Fortune. The name is a serial: Roberts carried it from ship to ship, retiring it onto whatever hull was currently the best in his squadron and letting the old one go. Treating it as a single vessel is the commonest error in the popular accounts, and it is why this record is a record of a name as much as of a ship.

Johnson and the compiled chronology track the name across at least three vessels: a galley fitted out in Newfoundland waters in 1720, a ship renamed at Carriacou that September, and finally the prize that mattered. In August 1721, at Point Cestos on the Guinea coast, Roberts took the Royal African Company frigate Onslow and made her his flagship. This is the last Royal Fortune, and the one the documents describe with any precision.

Her specifications come from the government's own account rather than from legend. Ogle's dispatch, printed in the London Gazette and reprinted in the 1723 trial pamphlet, names "his Prize (formerly called the Onslow, and since by the Pyrates the Royal Fortune)" and gives her 40 guns mounted and 152 men, 52 of them of African descent. That is the whole of the firm description. The exact day of the Onslow's capture is given as 5 or 8 August 1721 and is left open here.

She ended off Cape Lopez. On the morning of 10 February 1722 HMS Swallow came up on the Royal Fortune, and a broadside brought down her mainmast. Roberts was killed early in the action, his crew struck, and the ship was taken. The pamphlet and the dispatch record the capture; there is no wreck. No salvage site or physical remains have been identified for any Royal Fortune, so unlike some ships in this Archive she is a paper record only, with nothing on the seabed to grade against it.

Connections

Evidence behind this record

  • Roberts took the Royal African Company frigate Onslow in August 1721 and remade her as the forty-gun Royal Fortune. Highly Probable Printed narrative and dispatch: Johnson, General History, Vol. 1 (1724) and Ogle's dispatch (London Gazette 6091, SRC-ROB-212, which gives the ship as 'formerly called the Onslow', 40 guns, 152 men). The exact day (5 or 8 August) is uncertain.
  • Roberts named several successive flagships Royal Fortune; the name was serial, not a single hull. Probable Period print (Johnson) and chronology: Johnson and the compiled chronology record the name applied at Carriacou in 1720 and again to later prizes; the Archives records the serial usage rather than a single ship
  • The last Royal Fortune was the Royal African Company frigate Onslow, taken in 1721 and mounted with 40 guns; at her capture she carried 152 men, 52 of them of African descent. Official dispatch: Ogle's dispatch, London Gazette issue 6091 and the 1723 pamphlet: 'his Prize (formerly called the Onslow, and since by the Pyrates the Royal Fortune) had 40 Guns mounted and 152 Men'
  • The Royal Fortune was taken by HMS Swallow on 10 February 1722; no wreck or physical remains have been identified. Official dispatch and trial print: Ogle's dispatch and the 1723 pamphlet record the capture; no salvage or wreck site is documented

Open research

The exact day the Onslow was taken is given as 5 or 8 August 1721. The specifications of the last Royal Fortune (40 guns, 152 men, 52 of them of African descent) come from Ogle's dispatch in the London Gazette; no wreck or physical remains have been identified.