HMS Castor (1832)

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Career (UK) Royal Navy Ensign
Name: HMS Castor
Ordered: 13 May 1828
Builder: Chatham Dockyard
Laid down: January 1830
Launched: 2 May 1832
Commissioned: June 1832
Reclassified: Training ship from January 1860
Royal Naval Reserve training ship from April 1862
Fate: Sold on 25 August 1902
General characteristics
Class and type: 36-gun fifth rate ship of the line
Displacement: 1,808 tons
Tons burthen: 1,283 bm
Length: 159 ft (48 m) (overall)
133 ft 8 in (40.74 m) (gundeck)
Beam: 42 ft 6 in (12.95 m)
Draught: 13 ft 6 in (4.11 m)
Propulsion: Sails
Sail plan: Full rigged ship
Complement: 275
Armament:

36 guns:

  • Upper gundeck: 22 × 32 pdrs
  • Quarterdeck: 10 × 18 pdrs
  • Forecastle: 4 × 18 pdrs

After later refit:

  • Upper gundeck: 18 × 32 pdrs and 4 × 68-pounders
  • Quarterdeck: 10 × 32 pdr gunnades
  • Forecastle: 4 × 32pdr gunnades

HMS Castor was a 36-gun fifth rate frigate of the Royal Navy. .

Castor was built at Chatham Dockyard and launched on 2 May 1832. She was one of a two ship class of frigates, built to an 1828 design by Sir Robert Seppings, and derived from the earlier Stag class. The Castor class had a further 13 inches (33 cm) of beam to mount the heavier ordnance. Castor cost a total of £38,292, to be fitted for sea.

Her first captain was Lord John Hay, and by September 1832 Castor was at Lisbon. She spent a period of time in the Mediterranean, before being decommissioned at Chatham in 1842. She spent periods in the East Indies and the Cape of Good Hope, with further periods laid up at Chatham. She came to the assistance of HM Troopship Birkenhead, when the Birkenhead was wrecked on 26 February 1852.[1].

She was used as a training ship from January 1860, and was a Royal Naval Reserve training ship at North Shields from April 1862, having been reduced to 22 guns. She was sold at Sheerness on 25 August 1902 for breaking up at Castle & Sons breakers yard in Woolwich.[2].

Notes

  1. A Deathless Story by A C Addison and W H M Matthews
  2. page 121 A Deathless Story by A C Addison and W H M Matthews

References