HMS Cuttle (1807)

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Career (UK) Royal Navy Ensign
Name: HMS Cuttle
Ordered: 11 December 1805
Builder: Goodrich & Co. (prime contractor), Bermuda
Laid down: 1806
Launched: May 1807
Fate: Broken up 1814 or wrecked 1814
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 Cuttle (1807) 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 1807.[1] She was commissioned in 1807 under Lieut. Thomas Bury for the Halifax station. Between 28 September and 16 October she was in Portsmouth, refitting.[1]

Service

Cuttle was at the capture of Martinique in early 1809. [1] In 1847 the Admiralty authorized the issuance of the Naval General Service Medal with clasp "MARTINIQUE" to all remaining survivors of the campaign that claimed it.

In late 1809 Cuttle was again at Halifax. Around early November she captured the Three Sisters, which the pirate Edward Jordan had owned but stolen, after killing the crew, to prevent foreclosure.[2] He was convicted of piracy and executed in Halifax, Nova Scotia. His body was covered in tar and hanged from chains in a gibbet at Point Pleasant as a warning to others. His gibbet joined three others across the harbour on McNabs Island who had been executed for mutiny aboard the Cruizer-class brig-sloop HMS Columbine in the same year.

In 1810 Cuttle was under the command of Lieut. Michael Molloy, off North America. In June 1811 she was under Lieut. William Patterson, who in 1812 was with her in Portsmouth. She was then under a Lieut. Saunders. In 1813 she was under Lieut. John T. Young.[1]

Fate

Cuttle was decommissioned and laid up at Bermuda on 29 March.[1] She was broken up in 1814; still, several reports have her foundering with all hands off Halifax in December 1814.[3]

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Winfield (2008), p.359.
  2. Druett (2000), pp.104-5.
  3. Gossett (1986), p.95.
  • Druett, Joan (2000) She Captains: Heroines and Hellions of the Sea. (Simon & Schuster). ISBN 978-0743214377
  • Gossett, William Patrick (1986) The lost ships of the Royal Navy, 1793-1900. (London:Mansell).ISBN 0-7201-1816-6
  • Winfield, Rif (2008). British Warships in the Age of Sail 1793–1817: Design, Construction, Careers and Fates. Seaforth. ISBN 1861762461.