HMS Fort Diamond
HMS Fort Diamond was a six-gun sloop commissioned in 1804 in Martinique and lost to a French privateer in June of that year.
Fort Diamond's primary function was as a tender to the newly-established British position at Diamond Rock (nominally commissioned as HMS Diamond Rock). She had a crew of 30 men, volunteers from the 36-gun Fifth Rate Emerald, under the command of Emerald's First lieutenant, Thomas Forest.
On the morning of 13 March 1804, Fort Diamond weathered the Pearl Rock to bear down on a French privateer schooner, Mosambique, which had anchored close to the shore under a battery at Ceron, outside the port of Saint-Pierre, Martinique. In cooperation with Emerald, which created a diversion, Forest ran alongside the schooner, running into her at a rate of about nine knots an hour. At his approach, the schooner's crew fired a broadside and discharged some small arms before all 50 or 60 crewmen jumped overboard and swam ashore. The impact of Fort Diamond's strike broke the chain that anchored the Mosambique to shore, and the boarding party cut two cables to free her. Fort Diamond's casualties amounted to two men wounded. The Mosambique turned out to be armed with ten 18-pounder carronades, though she was pierced for 14 guns. She was from Guadeloupe under the command of Citizen Vallentes.[1] The Royal Navy took her into service as HMS Mosambique, but sold her in 1810.
On June 23, 1804, whilst the Fort Diamond was on a provisioning expedition at Roseau Bay, St. Lucia, a French boarding party from a schooner came up to her in two rowboats, boarding her at night while most of the crew were asleep below decks. A subsequent court-martial aboard HMS Galatea at English Harbour, Antigua, convicted Acting Lt. Benjamin Westcott, who was then her commander, of allowing his vessel to be captured.[2] The Board dismissed him from the Service, never to be permitted to serve in the Navy again.[3] (Three years later he became an American citizen.)
References
- ↑ James (1902), pp. 255-6.
- ↑ Byrne (1989), p.180.
- ↑ http://afinitas.org/westcott/bios/bw1785sloop.htm
- Clowes, Sir William Laird. The Royal Navy: A History From the Earliest Times to 1900, Volume V. Sampson Low, Marston ad Company, 1900. (Republished by Chatham Publishing, London, 1997. ISBN 1-86176-014-0.)
- 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.
