Harrison Foster

❖ Naval Career Summary ❖
Service Record:

DATES

RANK

VESSEL

NOTES

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1794–1797

Cadet

Royal Naval Academy

Graduated early

1797–1800

Able Seaman

HMS Berwick (74)

Active during Spithead & Nore mutinies

1800

Midshipman

HMS Berwick (74)

Cape St Vincent & Camperdown campaigns

1801

Midshipman

HMS Belle Poule (38)

Atlantic patrol

1802–1803

Master’s Mate

HMS Ranger (28)

Promotion track

1803

Master

HMS Crescent (28)

Independent navigation

1804–1807

Lieutenant

HMS Medea (28)

Caribbean patrols

1808–1810

Commanding Lieutenant

HMS Providence (38)

West Africa Squadron (anti-slavery)

1810–1811

Captain

HMS Defiance (74)

Channel & Atlantic duty

1811–Present

Post-Captain

Admiralty

Strategic assignment

His 34-month service suppressing the Atlantic slave trade earned him the enduring respect of both officers and crew, shaping his humanitarian stance toward discipline and command.

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In the Royal Navy's rating system, Third Rate Ships of the Line, like the HMS Defiance, were the "backbone" of the British fleet. They were considered the ideal compromise between firepower, cost, and maneuverability.

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While First Rate ships (like HMS Victory) are more powerful, they are slower and far more expensive to operate. HMS Defiance, a Third-Rate Ship of the Line is nimbler, easier to handle in various weather conditions, and can be produced in much larger numbers, allowing the Royal Navy to maintain a global presence.

Launched :: 1794
Builder :: Plymouth Dockyard
Class :: Bellona-class, third rate of the line. By the Napoleonic Wars, HMS Defiance was the most common and versatile design.

Decks :: She had 3 continuous decks, meaning they carried their main armament on two (upper and lower) continuous gundecks; and a weather deck ((quarterdeck & forecastle))

Armament :: Typically carried 74 guns. Carronades became increasingly common after the 1780s, prized for devastating short-range fire.

Lower Gun deck = 28 x 32-pounder long guns
Upper Gun deck = 28 x 24-pounder long guns
Quarter Deck = 14 x 12-pounder long guns + Forecastle = 4 x 9-pounder long guns +

Crew :: Comprised roughly 635 men Harrison’s command of Defiance was marked by discipline without cruelty, tactical precision, and repeated success against French privateers and warships. Though he found Channel duty stifling, his performance was exemplary.

Tons burthen ::

1,680 tons bm

Length: ::

Gundeck overall -

51.6 m (169 ft 4 in)

keel (for tonnage) -

140.2 m (459 ft 11 in)

Beam -

48.3 m (158 ft 5 in)

Depth of hold -

6.4 m (21 ft )

❖ -- HMS Bellona :: Launched in 1760, she became a prototype for the highly successful 74-gun class.

❖ -- HMS Ajax :: A 74-gun ship that fought at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.

❖ -- HMS Vanguard :: Served as Admiral Nelson’s flagship at the Battle of the Nile.

❖ -- HMS Colossus :: Distinguished itself at Trafalgar, suffering the highest casualties in the British fleet despite its success.

Defiance is a successful Third-Rate Ship of the Line, designed to stand in a line of battle and engage other large warships… large enough to fight first-rates and fast enough to pursue or disengage ... the perfect compromise ship.

❖ -- Primary unit of the battle fleet
❖ -- Line-of-battle combat
❖ -- Blockade enforcement
❖ -- Fleet escort and deterrence
❖ -- Power projection across the Empire

HMS Defiance was laid down at Plymouth Dockyard in the early 1790s, when Britain no longer debated the likelihood of war but instead planned for its duration. Her keel was set with the expectation of strain... of blockade, battle, and endurance rather than parade. She was launched in 1794, a Bellona-class seventy-four built not for elegance but for reliability under fire. Her lines favored steadiness over speed, her framing thick with seasoned oak meant to absorb punishment rather than avoid it. Even her name carried no flourish of myth or ornament... only a statement of intent. Defiance was built to refuse collapse: of formation, of morale, of purpose. From the outset, she was understood to be exactly what the Admiralty required... a Third Rate Ship of the Line, the compromise ship that made the British fleet unstoppable in aggregate rather than exceptional in isolation.


HMS Defiance entered service during the long grind of the Revolutionary and early Napoleonic wars, assigned not to dramatic single actions but to the work that decided wars quietly. She spent her early commissions enforcing blockades, holding station off hostile coasts for months at a time, riding out Atlantic gales that would have crippled lighter ships. Her guns were drilled relentlessly until they answered as a single voice. Her crew learned the rhythm of her decks, the way she leaned into heavy seas, the precise moment her timbers complained before holding fast. Other ships rotated through stations. Defiance remained. It was during these years that she acquired her first reputation... not as a ship of brilliance, but as a ship of dependability. She did not chase glory. She denied the enemy room to breathe.


By the height of the Napoleonic conflict, Defiance had become a ship captains trusted when the line would be tested. She was rarely placed on the extremes of a formation. Instead, she was assigned where the fighting would be thickest... supporting weaker ships, sealing gaps torn open by enemy fire, absorbing punishment meant for others. She was not the fastest sailer, nor the most heavily armed ship present. But when smoke flattened the horizon and signals dissolved into chaos, Defiance held her station. It was said quietly among officers that if Defiance was beside you in the line, you would not be abandoned.


HMS Defiance was no longer new, but she was far from obsolete. Re-rigged, refitted, and re-armed to Napoleonic standards, she carried decades of service in her beams when Captain Harrison James Foster, RN, was given command. Foster was not a flamboyant appointment. He was selected for the same reason Defiance herself endured... discipline, precision, and reliability. Under his command, Defiance served primarily in Channel and Atlantic duties, enforcing blockades, escorting convoys, and countering French privateers and detached squadrons. Though Foster privately found Channel duty stifling, his performance was exemplary. He treated the ship not as a blunt instrument, but as a system... every gun crew drilled with mathematical regularity, every watch held to standard without cruelty. The man in charge was known for discipline without excess. Flogging aboard Defiance became rare. Efficiency replaced fear. The result was a crew that worked not because they were broken to it, but because they trusted the man who held the deck.

In several engagements with French privateers and light warships, Defiance demonstrated the quiet lethality of a well-handled seventy-four. She did not pursue recklessly. She closed deliberately. When she fired, she did so at decisive range. Enemy vessels were taken or driven ashore with minimal British loss... outcomes attributed as much to Foster’s restraint as to his tactical clarity. Officers later remarked that Defiance seemed to reward Foster’s style of command. Rash captains had always found her unforgiving. Under a calm hand, she became formidable.


The HMS Defiance possessed something few ships achieved... a sense of expectation. Young officers joining her felt it immediately. She had seen men promoted, disgraced, buried at sea. She had carried the wounded home and watched others slip beneath the water without ceremony. She demanded competence and punished carelessness. Under Captain Foster, that character sharpened rather than softened. The ship became known as one where officers learned what sustained command truly meant... not brilliance in a moment, but steadiness across years.


When HMS Defiance eventually passed from frontline service, she did not fade into obscurity. She was remembered not as a legend of singular victory, but as something rarer and more valuable to Britain’s survival:

❖ -- A ship that held the line
❖ -- A ship that endured pressure
❖ -- A ship that did not fail when needed

❖ -- Captain Harrison James Foster’s name remains closely associated with her later years... not as the man who transformed her, but as the man who matched her nature.
❖ -- In a war defined not by isolated triumphs but by sustained dominance, HMS Defiance proved that endurance itself could be a weapon.

* Disclaimer::
For the purposes of this roleplaying story, HMS Defiance ... as presented in this and the story... is a fictionalized naval vessel, deliberately created to serve narrative and character development rather than strict historical record. While her design, capabilities, and service context are closely inspired by real Royal Navy Third Rate ships of the line from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the ship herself, her detailed specifications, service history, and associated command under Captain Harrison James Foster are entirely fictional within the story’s canon.

The class designation, armament layout, crew size, and operational roles attributed to Defiance are drawn from historically plausible Bellona-style seventy-four–gun ships, ensuring the vessel feels authentic to the Regency and Napoleonic era setting. However, her construction details, refits, deployments, engagements, and long-term endurance are intentionally shaped to support storytelling needs, allowing flexibility in timeline, geography, and outcomes without being constrained by real-world naval logs or recorded battles.

Likewise, the ship’s reputation ... her character as a steady, line-holding vessel, her perceived “expectations” of officers, and her symbolic role as an embodiment of endurance ... is a narrative device, not a historical claim. These elements exist to mirror the temperament and command philosophy of Captain Foster and to provide a thematic anchor for scenes involving discipline, leadership, and the quiet grind of war.

In short, HMS Defiance exists as a believable but invented construct ... historically grounded in form, tone, and doctrine, yet fully fictional in identity and service. She is designed to feel as though she could have sailed in the Royal Navy of the Regency era ... without ever having done so ... granting the story both authenticity and creative freedom.