HMS Centaur (1797)

For other ships of the same name, see HMS Centaur.

File:Vsevolod v. Implacable 1808.jpeg The Russian Ship Vsevolod burning, after the action with the Implacable and Centaur, destroyed in the presence of the Russian Fleet near Rogerwick bay on August 26, 1808.
Career (UK)
Name:	HMS Centaur
Ordered:	17 January 1788
Builder:	Woolwich Dockyard
Laid down:	November 1790
Launched:	14 March 1797
Fate:	Broken up, 1819
General characteristics
Class and type:	Mars-class ship of the line
Tons burthen:	1842 tons (1871.6 tonnes)
Length:	176 ft (54 m) (gundeck)
Beam:	49 ft (15 m)
Depth of hold:	20 ft (6.1 m)
Propulsion:	Sails
Sail plan:	Full rigged ship
Armament:	74 guns: Gundeck: 28 × 32 pdrs Upper gundeck: 30 × 24 pdrs Quarterdeck: 12 × 9 pdrs Forecastle: 4 × 9 pdrs

HMS Centaur was a 74-gun Third Rate of the Royal Navy, launched on 14 March 1797 at Woolwich. She served as Sir Samuel Hood's flagship in the Leeward Islands and the Channel. During her 22-year career Centaur saw action in the Mediterranean, the Channel, the West Indies, and the Baltic, fighting the French, the Dutch, the Danes and the Russians. She was broken up in 1819.

Service in the Mediterranean

Captain John Markham commissioned Centaur in June 1797 and the next year sailed for the Mediterranean. In November she participated in the occupation of Minorca. On the 13th, Centaur, HMS Leviathan, and HMS Argo, together with some armed transports, relatively unsuccessfully chased a Spanish squadron. Argo did re-capture the British 16-gun Pylades-class sloop HMS Peterel, which the Spanish had taken the day before.

The next year, on 2 February 1798, Centaur captured the 14-gun privateer La Vierga del Rosario. Then on 16 March, she and HMS Cormorant drove the 40-gun Guadaloupe aground near Cape Oropesa where she was wrecked. In June, Centaur was involved in a brief action off Toulon before elements of Admiral Kieth's fleet joined her. On 19 June 1799, Markham's squadron captured a French squadron consisting of the 40-gun Junon, 36-gun Alceste, 32-gun Courageuse, 18-gun Salamine and 14-gun Alerte. The British took the captured vessels into service under their existing names, except that Junon became Princess Charlotte. Soon after, Centaur returned to England.

While working in the Channel in late 1800 and early 1801, on 25 January 1801 Centaur sent two Danish galiots, Bernstorff and Rodercken, with bale goods and nuts, into Plymouth. Under Captain Littlehales, while serving with the Channel Fleet, Centaur and her class mate, HMS Mars, ran foul of each other off the Black Rocks during the night of 10 March. Centaur lost her main and main-top-mast, which killed two men and wounded four as they fell. Mars lost her head, bowsprit, foremast and main top-topmast, nearly ran ground near the Île de Bas, and had to be towed into Cawsand Bay by HMS Canada. The subsequent court martial acquitted the Mar's captain and lieutenant, but sentenced a lieutenant from Centaur to the loss of six month's seniority and dismissal from his ship.

Service in the West Indies

Late in 1802, Centaur sailed to the West Indies where she joined Vice Admiral Sir John Thomas Duckworth's squadron in Jamaica. When Commodore Sir Samuel Hood arrived to take command in the Leeward Islands, he raised his pennant in Centaur. On 26 June 1803 she participated in the capture of Saint Lucia and its citadel, Morne Fortunée; three days later the also expedition took Tobago from the French. The fleet went on to capture the Dutch islands. On 20 September at the taking of Demerara, Centaur seized the Batavian 14-gun corvette Hippomenes, which was acting as a guard ship at Fort Stabroek, Demerara, looking after the Governor's maritime affairs and harbour master for visiting ships. The British took her into service as HMS Hippomenes.

On 31 August 1803, Centaur took the Dutch ship Good Hope, which had a cargo of wine and cordage. In September Hood received the assignment to blockade the bays as Fort Royal and Saint Pierre, Martinique. On 22 October, Centaur chased the French privateer Vigilant, with two guns and a crew of 37, for seven hours before capturing her. Early on the morning of a battery on Cap des Salinés, Martinique, fired at Centaur as she sailed past. Hood ordered Maxwell to anchor in Petite Anse d'Arlette and send a party ashore. Centaur's marines, accompanied by some 40 sailors, landed and destroyed the battery, throwing six 24-pounders over the cliff. The militia guarding the battery had a brass 2-pounder gun but fled without putting up any resistance even though the landing party had to climb a steep, narrow path. Unfortunately, Centaur lost one man killed, and three officers and six men wounded when the battery's magazine exploded prematurely. Then, Centaur discovered a battery consisting of two 42-pounders and a 32-pounder between the Grande and Petite Anse d'Arlette. The French abandoned the battery when a landing party approached. Once again, Centaur's men threw the guns over the cliff and destroyed the battery and the ammunition stored there.

Centaur was lying at anchor in Fort Royal Bay, Martinique, on the morning of 1 December when lookouts sighted a schooner with a sloop in tow about six miles off making for . Centaur weighed anchor and set off in pursuit. After a 75 mile chase, the British captured the schooner, which turned out to be the privateer Sophie, out of Guadeloupe. She had a crew of 46 men, and had had eight guns that she had thrown overboard during the chase in an attempt to increase her speed. During the chase she had slipped the tow of the sloop. The British had sent the Sarah, an advice boat, after the sloop, which turned out to be carrying a few hogsheads of sugar and to have been cut out from Couland Bay, Tobago.

Hood took Sophie into service as a tender, charging her captain, Lieutenant William Donnett, with watching the channel between Diamond Rock and Martinique for enemy vessels. Donnett made frequent visits to the Rock, to gather the thick, broad-leaved grass to be woven into sailors' hats, and a spinach-like plant called callaloo, that when boiled and served daily, kept the crews of Centaur and Sophie from scurvy and was a nice addition to a menu too long dominated by salt beef.

Late in 1803 and early 1804, Centaur, under Captain Murray Maxwell, established a fort on Diamond Rock, a basalt island south of Fort-de-France, the main port of Martinique. The British commissioned the fort as HMS Diamond Rock and garrisoned it with two lieutenants and 120 men under the command of Lieutenant James Wilkes Maurice, Hood's 1st lieutenant. Unfortunately, at some point while this was going on, for an unknown reason Sophie blew up, killing all but one man of her crew. (The Diamond Rock fell to an overwhelming French attack on 3 June 1805.)

On 3 February, boats from Centaur cut out the French 18-gun brig-corvette Curieux from the Carénage, under the guns of Fort Edward at Fort-Royal harbour, Martinique. The British took Curieux into the Service as HMS Curieux with Lieut. George Bettesworth of Centaur as her commander. In the fight, the French lost 40 men killed and wounded, and the British had nine men wounded, including all three officers leading the cutting out party.

On 25 April 1804, Centaur arrived off the Surinam River after a three-week voyage from Barbados. HMS Pandour, HMS Serapis, Alligator, Hippomenes, Drake, the 10-gun schooner Unique, and transports carrying 2000 troops under Brigadier-General Sir Charles Green accompanied her. The Dutch governor rejected the surrender terms. Centaur lost four men killed and three wounded when her boats captured the battery of Friderici. The Dutch surrendered on 5 May and Hood made Capt. Conway Shipley of Hippomenes post into Centaur. (One day earlier the Admiralty had promoted him into the ex-French 28-gun frigate HMS Sagesse; he later assumed command of her at Jamaica.) Hood next appointed Capt. William Richardson of the 28-gun frigate Alligator to command Centaur, and the Admiralty confirmed his appointment on 27 September.

In July 1804, Centaur recaptured the English slaver Elizabeth, and took the French privateer schooner Elizabeth and the schooner Betsey, in ballast. Then in December, she recaptured the English ship Admiral Peckenham. Centaur sailed to England in the spring of 1805, before returning to the Leeward Islands.

A year later, on 29 July 1805, Centaur, under Capt. Henry Whitby, in company with a squadron under Captain De Courcy, was sailing from Jamaica to join Nelson, when the squadron encountered a hurricane. The storm sent her masts overboard, carried away her rudder, and stove in all her boats. The falling main mast started a major leak under the starboard quarter. For sixteen hours her pumps were barely able to offset the water coming in. To help keep her afloat, the crew threw all but a dozen or so guns overboard. When the waves moderated, her crew was able to get a sail under her bottom and use her hawsers to frap her frames together. The 74-gun Third Rate HMS Eagle was then able to tow Centaur into Halifax, where Commissioner John Inglefield, who had been captain of the previous Centaur when she foundered after the Atlantic hurricane of 16–17 September 1782, greeted her.

Captain Whitby married Catherine Dorothea Inglefield, the commissioner's youngest daughter, around the end of 1805. Whitby wanted to stay in Halifax so he made an exchange into the 50-gun Fourth Rate HMS Leander. Captain John Talbot of Leander took command of Centaur on 5 December and sailed her home.

The Channel and Eastern Atlantic

In 1806, Centaur, Capt. W. H. Webley, bore the broad pennant of Capt. Sir Samuel Hood who was acting as Commodore of the squadron off Rochefort. On 16 July, each of the squadron's line-of-battle ships contributed a boat, and HMS Indefatigable and HMS Iris several boats to a cutting out expedition on two corvettes and a convoy in the Garonne. Lieutenant Edward Reynolds Sibley, Centaur's First Lieutenant, was badly wounded in a successful attack on the largest corvette, the five-year old Caesar. Seven other men from Centaur were also wounded. The other French vessels escaped up the river and the British boats that followed them, unsuccessfully, suffered heavy casualties.

During the Action of 25 September 1806, Centaur captured Armide, and assisted in the capture of Infatigable, Gloire and Minerve. The British took all of them into the Service under their existing names. Centaur lost three men killed and three wounded. In addition, a musket ball shattered Hood's arm, which had to be amputated. The wound forced Hood to quit the deck and leave the ship in the charge of Lieutenant William Case. Centaur also lost most of her lower rigging.

Centaur sailed from Spithead on 30 November 1806 with orders to join a secret expedition at the Cape Verde Islands. When she arrived she found that the expedition had already sailed. Centaur and her small squadron then cruised between Madeira and the Canary Islands before returning to England.

The Baltic

On 26 July 1807, Centaur, with Commodore Sir Samuel Hood and Captain William Henry Webley, sailed as a part of a fleet of 38 vessels under Admiral James Gambier and bound for Copenhagen. Between 15 August and 20 October, she participated the second Battle of Copenhagen when Gambier, together with General Lord William Cathcart, captured the Danish Navy in a preemptive attack.

In the summer of 1807, Samuel Hood had received a promotion to Rear Admiral. Taking command of the fleet at Copenhagen, he raised his pennant in Centaur on 18 October. Centaur's boats were employed in blockading the harbour to intercept any supplies arriving from the Baltic. Her cutter set out to cut off a Danish dispatch boat trying to pass the island of Moen on her way to Bornholm. The Dane ran on shore under a high cliff where it came under the protection of a body of troops with several cannon, who opened fire on the cutter, killing the lieutenant in charge. Nevertheless, the other two officers and the cutter's crew succeeded in securing the prize and towing her off.

By 24 December, Centaur was again briefly in the Atlantic, this time participating in General William Beresford's (friendly) occupation of the island of Madeira.

In early 1808 Russia initiated the Finnish War in response to Sweden's refusal to bow to Russian pressure to join the anti-British alliance. Russia captured Finland and made it a Grand Duchy under the Russian Empire. The British decided to take counter-measures and in May sent a fleet, including Centaur, under Vice-Admiral Sir James Saumarez to the Baltic.

On 9 July, the Russians brought out their fleet from Kronstadt. The Swedes massed a fleet of 11 line-of-battle ships and 5 frigates at Örö and Jungfrusund to oppose them. On 16 August, Saumarez then sent Centaur and Implacable, Captain Thomas Byam Martin, also a 74-gun Third Rate, to join the Swedish fleet. They chased two Russian frigates on the 19th. and joined the Swedes the following day.

On 22 August, the Russian fleet, consisting of nine ships of the line, five large frigates and six smaller ones, moved from Hango to threaten the Swedes. The Swedes, with the two British ships, grouped at Oro, and three days later sailed to meet the Russians.

The Russians and the Anglo-Swedish force were fairly evenly matched, but the Russians retreated and the Allied ships followed them. Centaur and Implacable were better vessels than the Swedish ships and slowly pulled ahead, with Implacable catching up with a Russian straggler, the 74-gun Vsevolod (also Sewolod), under Captain Rudnew (or Roodneff). Implacable and Vsevolod exchanged fire, with the Russian suffering heavy casualties before running aground. Vsevolod hauled down her colors, but Hood recalled Implacable because the Russian fleet was approaching. During the fight Implacable lost six dead and 26 wounded; the Vsevolod lost some 48 dead and 80 wounded.

A Russian frigate then towed Vsevolod to Rager Vik (Ragerswik or Rogerswick), but Centaur was able to drive off the boats that were attempting to get the disabled ship into harbour. A party of seamen from Centaur were able to lash her mizzen to the Russian bowsprit before Centaur opened fire. Both vessels grounded, and both sides attempted to board the other vessel. However, Implacable came up and fired into Vsevolod for about 10 minutes, forcing the Russian to strike.

Implacable hauled Centaur off. The British removed their prisoners and then set fire to Vsevolod, which blew up some hours later. Centaur lost three killed and 27 wounded. Vsevolod, which had received about 100 men as reinforcements after her initial battle with Implacable, lost another 124 men killed and wounded in the battle with Centaur; 56 Russians managed to swim ashore and so were not taken prisoner.

Return to the Mediterranean

In 1809, Frederick Marryat, later a celebrated author, joined Centaur as a midshipman. He continued to serve under Hood in the Mediterranean. While Centaur was cruising off Toulon, Marrayat jumped overboard to rescue a man who had fallen from the main-yard.

Capt. John Chambers White brought Hibernia to Port Mahon to be Hood's flagship. White then took command of Centaur. Centaur participated in the defence of Tarragona when French forces under Marshal Suchet besieged the city from May 1811. Captains Codrington, White, and Adam spent most nights in their gigs carrying out operations under cover of darkness to evacuate women, children and wounded. On 21 June the French broke in and massacred several thousand men, women and children and took about 10,000 prisoners before setting fire to the city. The boats of the squadron had only been able to rescue some five or six hundred of the inhabitants.

On 28 June, Centaur's launch was in action with French troops on the beach near Tarragona. She lost two killed and three men wounded. Centaur returned to Plymouth in October 1813.

Channel Fleet

Centaur first sailed to Saint Helen's Island, Quebec, and the Western Isles (the Azores), but arrived off Cherbourg by November 1813. On the evening of 6 April 1814, Regulus, together with three brigs and some shore batteries. At midnight, before the attack had even begun, it became clear that the French had set fire to their ships, which were totally destroyed by morning. Before the 9th, a landing party of seamen and marines from the 38-gun frigate Belle Poule, under Captain George Harris, successively entered and destroyed the batteries of Pointe Coubre, Pointe Nègre, Royan, Soulac, and Mèche.

Final years

After the end of the Napoleonic Wars, Centaur made a few more cruises, including another to Quebec, in 1814. In the spring of 1815, under Capt. T. G. Caulfield, she sailed with HMS Chatham from Plymouth to the Western Islands again. On 26 August she left the Cape of Good Hope for England, arriving on 13 November. She was paid off in Plymouth three days later. She was broken up in 1819.

References

• Boswall, Captain, RN. (June 1833). Narrative of the Capture of the Diamond Rock, effected by Sir Samuel Hood, in the Centaur. The United Service Journal and naval and military magazine, Part 2, No. 55, pp. 210–215.
• Campbell, John (1818) Naval history of Great Britain: including the history and lives of the British admirals. (London: Baldwyn), Vol. 8.
• Colledge, J.J. Ships of the Royal Navy: The Complete Record of All Fighting Ships of the Royal Navy From the Fifteenth Century to the Present. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 1987. ISBN 0-87021-652-X.
• Grocott, Terence (1997) Shipwrecks of the Revolutionary & Napoleonic eras. (Mechanicsburg: Stackpole).
• Lavery, Brian (2003) The Ship of the Line - Volume 1: The development of the battlefleet 1650-1850. Conway Maritime Press. ISBN 0-85177-252-8.
• Moore, Alan Hilary & Arthur George Holdsworth Macpherson (1926) Sailing ships of war, 1800-1860: including the transition to steam. (London, Halton & T. Smith).
• Southey, Thomas (1827). Chronological history of the West Indies, (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, & Green), Vol. 3.
• Winfield, Rif. British Warships in the Age of Sail, 1793-1817: Design, Construction, Careers and Fates. Seaforth Publishing, 2nd edition, 2008. ISBN 978-1-84415-717-4.