HMS Culloden was a seventy-four-gun Royal Navy ship launched in 1776 and sent to North America during the American War of Independence to help blockade the French at Newport, Rhode Island. In January 1781, severe weather drove her ashore at Montauk while she was trying to intercept French ships, and although her crew survived, efforts to refloat her failed. After salvage operations removed masts, smaller guns, and other material, the hulk was burned and abandoned. The wreck remained a source of salvage for years and was identified archaeologically in 1971. Its remains are significant for their Revolutionary War connection and for evidence of late eighteenth-century British naval construction, including copper sheathing.