HMS Somerset was a 70-gun third-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, built at Chatham Dockyard to the draught specified by the 1745 Establishment, and launched on 18 July 1748. She was the third vessel of the Royal Navy to bear the name. Somerset was involved in several notable battles of the Seven Years' War and the American Revolutionary War. She was wrecked in a storm in 1778 when she ran aground off of Provincetown, on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Seven Years' War HMS Somerset saw action at the capture of the fortress of Louisbourg and Cape Breton Island during the Seven Years' War (a theatre known in the United States as the French and Indian War). In 1758, a British expedition under General Jeffery Amherst besieged the fortress at Louisbourg, beginning on 8 June. The British had 39 ships with about 14,000 sailors, and a further landing force of 12,870 soldiers. The fortress was defended by 10 French ships with 3,870 sailors, and another 3,920 soldiers inside the fortress itself. The 48-day siege by Admiral Edward Boscawen and General Amherst ended with the French surrender on 26 July, clearing the way for a British expedition to sail up the Saint Lawrence River to take Quebec City the following summer. The expedition against Quebec City, led by General James Wolfe, was landed by a force that included HMS Somerset. The British were victorious at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham on 13 September 1759 giving Britain control of Canada and North America's Atlantic seaboard. American Revolutionary War HMS Somerset went on to play a well documented part in the American Revolutionary War, where she served from 1774 to 1776 and again from 1777 up until her loss in 1778. Battle of Lexington and Concord Events might have unfolded differently on the night of 18 April 1775 had the duty watch of HMS Somerset been more alert. Colonel Paul Revere had set out that night to ride to Lexington to warn two prominent Colonial leaders, Samuel Adams and John Hancock, that their lives might be in danger. Having departed Boston by rowboat to cross the Back Bay into Charlestown, he narrowly avoided being noticed by HMS Somerset, which was anchored there. Had he been stopped, the militias of many towns would not have arrived in Concord, and the next day's battle of Lexington and Concord might have had a