HMS Peruvian (1808)

HMS Peruvian was an 18-gun Cruizer class brig-sloop launched in 1808 at Parson's Yard, Warsash, England. She was the first naval vessel built at that yard. Peruvian captured two American privateers and participated in an expedition up the Penobscot River during the War of 1812. Then she claimed Ascension Island for Great Britain in 1815. She was broken up in 1830.

Napoleonic Wars

Commander Francis Douglas commissioned her in May 1808 for the Downs. Then on 14 January 1810 she sailed for the Leeward Islands. In November 1810 Commander Francis Dickinson took command but he died on 23 April 1812.

War of 1812

In 1812 Peruvian was under Lieutenant Amos F. Westropp, in the West Indies. He was promoted to Commander in August. He captured the American privateer schooner Yankee off Sombrero, Anguilla, on 24 October. Yankee had 7 guns and a crew of 44 men. She was 38 days out of Salem but had made no captures.

In 1813, under Commander George Kippen, Peruvian was on the American station. While she was beating up to her station from St Thomas and was seventy-nine miles E. by N. of Sombrero, she encountered the American privateer John. During the last two hours of the 15 hour chase John kept up a continuous fire from her stern guns. Eventually Peruvian got within pistol shot and fired her bow guns, with her marines also firing. The John surrendered and was found to carry 16 guns and a crew of 100 men.

In August 1814, Peruvian took part in an expedition up the Penobscot River in Maine. She joined Sylph, Dragon, Endymion, Bacchante, as well as some transports. Bulwark, Tenedos, Rifleman, and Pictou also joined. On the evening of 31 August, Sylph, Peruvian, and the transport Harmony, accompanied by a boat from Dragon, embarked marines, foot soldiers and a detachment from the Royal Artillery, to move up the Penobscot under the command of Captain Robert Barrie of Dragon. The objective was the frigate Adams, of twenty-six 18 pounders, which had taken refuge some 27 miles up stream at Hampden, Maine. Here Adams had landed her guns and fortified a position on the bank with fifteen 18-pounders commanding the river. Moving up the river took two days, but eventually, after the Battle of Hampden, the British were able to capture the American defenders at Bangor, though only after the Americans had burnt the Adams. The British also captured 11 other ships and destroyed six. The British lost only one man killed, a sailor from Dragon, and had several soldiers wounded.

In October 1814 Commander James Kearney White took over command.

The news of Waterloo

On 8 April 1815 Peruvian left Bermuda for home. By mid-June she was at Ostende. From there she carried Major the Hon Henry Percy of the 14th Light Dragoons, the only aide to the Duke of Wellington to have survived Waterloo unscathed, into the middle of the Channel, where she was becalmed. White lowered Peruvian's gig, chose four stalwart men from his crew, took an oar himself and handed one to Percy, who had learned how to row at Eton, and with two captured French Eagles lying in the stern, rowed for the Kent coast. Around 3 p.m. on 21 June, they arrived near Broadstairs, where Percy and White immediately took a post-chaise-and-four to deliver the news to London.

Ascension Island

Peruvian, still under Captain White, together with her sister ship Zenobia, under Captain William Dobree, had been part of the flotilla under Rear Admiral George Cockburn that had taken Napoleon into his final exile at St Helena. Cockburn, concerned that the French might use Ascension Island, uninhabited at the time, to mount a rescue mission, decided to claim and garrison the island. On 22 October 1815, at 5pm, Peruvian and Zenobia anchored in Clarence Bay. The ships' logs record that at 5.30pm, White and Dobree came ashore, raised the Jack, and took possession of the island in the name of His Britannic Majesty, King George III. Zenobia left shortly thereafter, while Peruvian stayed until Spring.

Napoleon died on St Helena in 1821 and the Admiralty wanted to withdraw the garrison. However, Sir George Collier, Commodore of the West Africa Squadron, persuaded the Admiralty to retain it as it had become a victualing station for the vessels of the squadron, which was engaged in anti-slavery patrols. It also provided a sanatorium for the squadron's ships and crew.

Ascension Island was later designated "HMS Ascension", a "Stone sloop of War of the smaller class".

Fate

By July 1816 Peruvian was laid up in Ordinary at Plymouth where she stayed until 1830. She was broken up on 25 February 1830.

References

• Colledge, J.J. (1987) 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). ISBN 0-87021-652-X.
• Watson, George Leo de St M (1912) A Polish exile with Napoleon : embodying the letters of Captain Piontkowski to General Sir Robert Wilson and many documents from the Lowe papers, the Colonial office records, the Wilson manuscripts, the Capel Lofft correspondence, and the French and Genevese archives hitherto unpublished. (London & New York: Harper & Brothers).
• Winfield, Rif (2008) British Warships in the Age of Sail 1793-1815: Design, Construction, Careers and Fates. (Seaforth Publishing), 2nd Edition. ISBN 978-1-84415-717-4.