HMS Weazel (1805)
HMS Weazel (sometimes spelt Weazle and Weasel) was a Royal Navy 18-gun Cruizer class brig, built by Thomas Owen and launched in 1805 on the Topsham, Devon. In her eight-year career she operated along the Italian coast, in the Adriatic and in the Aegean. She destroyed many small vessels, took numerous prizes, and participated in a number of actions at sea and on shore.
Service
Weazel entered service in 1805, under the command of Captain Peter Parker in the Mediterranean. On 9 October Weazel, joined Pickle, commanded by Lieutenant John Richards Lapenotiere, to assist Captain Henry Blackwood in watching the coast off Cádiz, and to provide reconnaissance services for the fleet. The Weazel was the first British vessel to sight the Franco-Spanish fleet leaving Cádiz, which led to the Battle of Trafalgar. For this service Parker was promoted to Post-captain and moved to Melpomene in October.
In 1806 command of Weazel passed to John Clavell. Vice-ad. Collingwood appointed him immediately after the battle of Trafalgar. In the battle Clavell had received a head-wound from which he never fully recovered. Weazel was first employed watching the enemy off Cartagena, Santa Cruz, Teneriffe and Madeira. She then operated off Catalonia where she captured the Spanish 8-gun privateer Secondo Cornelo. She then joined the squadron in the Gulf of Venice at the start of the Adriatic campaign of 1807–1814.
Weazel took the island of Cherso, some 15 miles south of Fiume, together with a number of French and Austrian vessels. Clavell and Lieut. Edmund Miller both sustained wounds in an attack on another island when Weazel accompanied the frigate Unite.
On 21 August 1807, Weazel captured, with the assistance of Unite, the vessel Bizzaro for which prize money was due.[1]
Next, Weazel was sent to Corfu with dispatches for the British Minister from the senior officer off Venice. Clavell landed at night and, with only his servant carrying a box, made his way to the Minister's house. As he was about to enter a Greek intercepted him with the news that under the Treaty of Tilsit, the Tzar had transferred Corfu from Russian control to the French. Furthermore, the French general and his officers were at that moment dining in the house. Clavell and his servant immediately made their way back to Weazel's boat, passing French guards that they had not noticed before. The Greeks kept silent until he was well clear of the land then began to jeer the French sentinels.
During the night three privateers attacked Weazel but she was able to sink or drive them off. Between 23 and 29 August 1807, Weazel drove three trabaccolos on the rocks, captured three more carrying 251 French soldiers, destroyed a French brig and yet another trabaccolo, all while sailing to bring the news back to Malta. After replenishing there, Weazel returned to Palermo where Clavell was promoted into the 56-gun Fourth Rate Glatton on 4 February 1808, until he was invalided home.
Western Mediterranean
Commander Henry Prescott replaced Clavell. Weazel then took part in coastal operations off Italy and in hunting privateers in the Eastern Mediterranean.
In 1809, Weazel took the 4-gun French privateer Véloce on 27 October. On Christmas Day she took the 14-gun Eole. On 25 July 1810, her boats, with those of Thames and Pilot, sighted a convoy protected by gunboats and scampavias (small war galleys) sailing from Naples carrying supplies for Joachim Murat at Scylla. The British harried the convoy till it ran up on the beach below the walls of Amantea. Despite hostile fire from the walls, the British sent in several boats under Prescott's command and they were able to bring off 28 transports, as well as six gunboats and two Scampavias. The rest — 7 gunboats, 5 armed vessels and 31 transports — they destroyed. The British suffered one man killed and seven wounded, including one man from Weazel. Prescott received a promotion for his role in the action.[2] Two days later Prescott again landed at Amantea, this time with Marines from the 74-gun Third Rate Cumberland. The landing party again destroyed several vessels and brought off a gun. Weazel had three men wounded.
During August Prescott engaged two convoys and captured six vessels. He had to abandon two that he was unable to tow out from under the guns of a French battery. Weazel lost six men wounded, one fatally. The loss of the convoy at Amantea, and another earlier one in July, forced Murat to abandon his plans for the invasion of Sicily and return to Naples.
In 1811, Prescott took Weazel to the Aegean Sea where she operated off Smyrna. When he received his promotion, back-dated to 25 July 1811, Prescott passed her command to John Strutt Peyton. On 29 August, Weazel captured the French privateer Roi de Rome.
Adriatic
In 1812, Weazel, commanded now by John William Andrew, moved to the Adriatic again, and joined the ship of the line HMS Victorious. Together the ships watched Venice harbour and observed the completion and departure of the French ship of the line Rivoli. In the Action of 22 February 1812, Victorious and Weazel chased and defeated Rivoli and her escorts. Weazel held off the small ships guarding Rivoli and destroyed the brig Mercure, while Victorious defeated and captured the French ship of the line, which the Admiralty purchased into the service.
In September, Commander James Black took command of Weazel. On 21 December, Weazel was accompanying the 38-gun frigate HMS Apollo, Captain Bridges Watkinson Taylor commanding, when the two vessels chased a trabaccolo under the protection of the tower of San Cataldo, on the coast between Brindisi and Otranto. A landing party from the two vessels captured the tower and blew it up.
Weazel remained in the Adriatic into 1813, assisting George Cadogan in HMS Havannah in his raiding campaign on the Italian coast. The British strategy in the Adriatic was simple: they laid waste to any French military and commercial maritime traffic they could. They also attacked any French-held forts, villages, towns, villages, and even some cities.
On 6 January, boats from Bacchante and Weazel were in action to the south-east of Cape Otranto. The boats took the 2-gun gunboats Indomptable, Arrogante, Diligente and Salmino. They also took the 1-gun Calypso.
Three days later, Weazel was present at the capture of La Madonna di Megaspilio. On 4 March, she was present at the capture of the Sostegno. On 22–23 April, she chased a convoy and ended up in an action with a number of gun boats east-north-east of the island of Zirona. At Bassoglina on 22 April she engaged 14 gunboats and destroyed six.
Between 3 July and 4 August, boats from Milford, Elizabeth, Eagle, Bacchante, Haughty, and Weazel were involved in actions at Fiumé, Porto-Ré, Bocca-Ré, the fortress of Farasina, Rovigno, and the island of Rogoznica. On 22 July she and Saracen took the port of Mezzo. On 4 August, boats from Weazel and Milford saw action at Rogoznica. Finally, on 24 August, she took the 2-gun gunboats Auguste and Tonnant.
In spring 1814, while reconnoitering the French vessels at Corfu, Bacchante went aground on a reef. She had to drop twenty-four of her 18-pounders overboard, together with their shot, before she could be got off. Weazel helped recover eleven of the guns, and Bacchante returned to Malta on 20 April 1814
Fate
Weazel arrived in Portsmouth on 8 September 1814 and was put under quarantine. She was paid off in Ordinary at Portsmouth in 1814. There she was sold for ₤840 in the following year.
References
- ↑ The balance of the prize monies due were not paid until 22 July 1850 due to the bankruptcy of the agent appointed to make payment. [1]
- ↑ William H Long (1895) Medals of the British navy and how they were won: with a list of those officers, who for their gallant conduct were granted honorary swords and plate by the Committee of the Patriotic Fund. (London: Norie & Wilson), pp.174-5.
- Ships of the Old Navy
- "HMS Weazel". Index of 19th Century Naval Vessels. http://www.pbenyon.plus.com/18-1900/W/05201.html. Retrieved 2008-01-22.
- 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.
