HMS Grampus (1802)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
HMS Grampus was a 50-gun ship of the line of the Royal Navy. She was commissioned at Portsmouth by Captain T. Gordon Caulfield in March 1803 and was ordered to the Downs on May 7. As soon as her complement of men was completed and her bounty paid she sailed to join Admiral Thornborough's squadron off Goree. She returned to Portsmouth from Guernsey on June 20 to fit out for the East Indies and sailed with a convoy under her protection on June 29. She carried £100,000 being shipped by the British East India Company to Bengal. She spent 1805 in the East Indies.
In March 1806 Captain James Haldane Tait took command of Grampus, leaving Sir Francis Drake while she was employed in India. Later she was stationed at the Cape of Good Hope, and returned home in the summer of 1809, escorting a large convoy of East India Company ships which Captain Tait had taken under his protection at St. Helena. He was presented by the Court of directors with a sum of money for the purchase of a piece of plate. Grampus was paid off because of her poor condition.
On April 28, 1811, under the command of Captain William Hanwell, Grampus joined an East India convoy to see them through to the coast of Africa. On September 30, back at Portsmouth, a court martial was convened on board Raisonnable in Sheerness harbour to try Lieutenant John Cheshire of Grampus. Captain Hanwell accused him of insolence, contempt, and disrespect on April 11 and similar conduct, coupled with neglect of duty, on April 15. The court found the charges unfounded and acquitted Lieutenant Cheshire.
In November 1811 Captain Cockburn hoisted a broad pendant on board Grampus, preparatory to proceeding as one of three commissioners (the others were Messrs. Sydenham and Morier) nominated by the Prince Regent to mediate between Spain and her colonies. They received final instructions on April 2, 1812, and arrived in Cádiz on April 21 to find the Spanish government and the majority of the Cortes resolved to retain absolute control over their South American possessions instead of taking a liberal view as proposed by the British government. He returned from his unsuccessful mission on August 4.
In 1816 Grampus was taken out of commission at Woolwich, where she was converted to a troopship and then used as a hospital ship at Deptford from 1820 until being lent to the Society for Destitute Seamen at Deptford in 1824. She served as a hospital ship until 1831. The society relocated at this time to HMS Dreadnought and in due course provided the foundation for the UK's Hospital for Tropical Diseases and the Seamen's Dreadnought Hospital at Greenwich Hospital, later relocated to St Thomas's Hospital.
