The Swan class was a class of 14-gun shipsloops (even if in fact they mounted, after 1779, 16 guns). The class was designed for the Royal Navy by the Surveyor of the Navy, John Williams. Twentythree more were ordered between 1773 and 1779; they represented the standard shipsloop design of the British Navy during the American Revolutionary War, during which eleven of them were lost. Surviving vessels went on to serve during the French Revolutionary War and Napoleonic War. HMS Swan was the lead ship in the Swan class of shipsloops. She was launched on 21 November 1767. HMS Swan served during the American Revolutionary War, but in 1779 she was converted to an 8-gun fire ship and renamed Explosion. In 1783, she was reconverted to sloop, and later sailed to the East Indies, Jamaica and the North Sea, where it captured two privateers. She was laid up at Portsmouth in 1801 and sold for disposal in 1814.
