HMS Capelin (1804)

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Career (UK) Royal Navy Ensign
Name: HMS Capelin
Ordered: 23 June 1803
Builder: Goodrich & Co. (prime contractor), Bermuda
Laid down: 1803
Launched: 1804
Fate: Wrecked 30 June 1808
General characteristics
Type: Ballahoo-class schooner
Tonnage: 70 41/94 bm
Length: 55 ft 2 in (16.81 m) (overall)
40 ft 10.5 in (12.5 m) (keel)
Beam: 18 ft 0 in (5.49 m)
Depth of hold: 9 ft 0 in (2.74 m)
Propulsion: Sails
Sail plan: Schooner
Complement: 20
Armament: 4 x 12-pounder Carronades

HMS Capelin (1804) was a Royal Navy Ballahoo-class schooner of 4 12-pounder carronades and a crew of 20. The prime contractor for the vessel was Goodrich & Co., in Bermuda, and she was launched in 1804.[1] Like many of her class and the related Cuckoo-class schooners, she succumbed to the perils of the sea relatively early in her career.

In May 1804 she was commissioned under Lieut. Archibald McDonald (acting until December 1806) for the Halifax station.[1] A court martial on 20 December 1806 sentenced Macdonald to be placed at the bottom of the list after Capelin went ashore.

In 1807 Capelin was off Le Havre and under Lieut. Thomas Delafons. He was followed by Lieut. Josias Bray.[1]

She was reconnoitering the harbour at Brest, France when she hit the sunken Parquette Rock at 7am on 30 June 1808.[2] With Whiting in attendance, at low water she slipped off and sank immediately.[2]All her crew were saved by ships in company.[3]

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 Winfield (2008), p.359.
  2. 2.0 2.1 Gossett (1986), p. 66.
  3. Grocott (1997), p.258.
  • Gossett, William Patrick (1986) The lost ships of the Royal Navy, 1793-1900. (London:Mansell).ISBN 0-7201-1816-6
  • Grocott, Terence (1997) Shipwrecks of the revolutionary & Napoleonic eras. (Mechanicsburg: Stackpole Books).
  • Winfield, Rif (2008). British Warships in the Age of Sail 1793–1817: Design, Construction, Careers and Fates. Seaforth. ISBN 1861762461.