French ship Beaumont (1762)

The Beaumont was built by Caro at Lorient, Brittany, for the French East India Company (FEIC).^[1][2] She was similar in design to the East Indiamen Villevault and Pondichéry.^[2] Beaumont's keel was laid down in March 1762 and she was acquired by the FEIC on 19 August and commissioned into their service in December. She measured 126' 4" in length at the gundeck (in French feet, equivalent to 47.098 metres, 154 ft 6.3 in imperial), 126' 4" length at the keel (40.929 metres, 134 ft 3.4 in imperial), 37' in breadth (12.045 metres, 39 ft 6.2 in imperial) and 14' 6" in depth (4.588 metres, 15 ft 0.6 in imperial). Beaumont's displacement was 900 tons burthen.^[1] Intended for use as a merchantman she was nevertheless heavily armed for the France to Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean trades.^[3]

The FEIC was dissolved in 1769 and in July of the following year Beaumont became a vessel of the French Navy.^[4][1] In naval service she was ship-rigged and, mounting 56 guns, was classified as a fourth-rate (a deuxième rang in the French classification system).^[5][3]

Beaumont left naval service in 1772, being sold to a private citizen and renamed Lyon.^[3] Lyon saw service in the American War of Independence and was captured, while acting in support of the rebels, by the British frigate Maidstone in 1778. The badly damaged Lyon was taken to the Royal Navy dockyard in Antigua. Her later fate is not known but she is unlikely to have ever left the dock and is likely to have been stripped down before she was wrecked.^[3] This theory is supported by a 1780 map of Antigua which implied the presence of a French Navy vessel, shipwrecked in the harbour.^[6]

The wreck of the Beaumont/Lyon was long suspected to lie within the mud on the bed of Antigua dockyard. A hydrographic survey carried out in 2013 supported this hypothesis. Later that year local diver Maurice Belgrave found the timbers of a ship in the mud while carrying out the routine cleaning of an anchor chain.^[3] The wreck lay 8 feet (2.4 m) below water level in the Tank Bay part of the dockyard, close to its entrance.^[6]

The wreck remained uninvestigated until 2021 when an archaeological expedition was funded by the governments of France and Martinique and by the American Richard Lounsbery Foundation. After six days of investigation the expedition confirmed the discovery of the 40-metre (130 ft) long wreck of an 18th-century timber vessel.^[3][6] The identification of the vessel was not confirmed but its dimensions are consistent with those of the Beaumont. If confirmed the wreck would be the only one known of an FEIC vessel with an intact hull. The wreck has been deemed too costly and difficult to raise but some artefacts of its timbers and ballast have been recovered.^[3][6]