High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The fourth HMS Diamond was a Modified Lowestoffe-class fifth-rate frigate, ordered on 25 December 1770 as one of five fifth-rate frigates of 32 guns each contained in the emergency frigate-building programme inaugurated when the likelihood of war with Spain arose over the ownership of the Falkland Islands (eight sixth-rate frigates of 28 guns each were ordered at the same time). Sir Thomas Slade's design for the Lowestoffe was approved, but was revised to produce a more rounded midships section; the amended design was approved on 3 January 1771 by Hawke's outgoing Admiralty Board, just before it was replaced. The contract to build the Diamond was awarded to Hodgson Co at Hull, the keel being laid in May 1771, and the frigate was launched 28 May 1774, at a cost of ?11,506.9.1d. She sailed from Hull on 13 June 1774 for Chatham Dockyard, where she remained for nearly two years before she was completed and fitted out to the Navy Board's needs...