HMS Dauntless (1804)

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Career (UK)

Name:	HMS Dauntless
Builder:	Union Dry Dock, Hull
Launched:	November 1804
Commissioned:	March 1805
Fate:	Surrendered 19 May 1807
General characteristics
Class and type:	Combatant class sloop
Tons burthen:	426 tons
Length:	117 ft (36 m)
Draught:	11 ft (3.4 m)
Propulsion:	Sails
Sail plan:	Pram
Armament:	22 x 24 pounder carronades

For other ships of the same name, see HMS Dauntless.

The first HMS Dauntless was a 22 carronade Combatant class sloop of the Royal Navy.

[edit] History

She was built in Hull at the William Gibson Shipyard^[1], as one of a class of three (the others being HMS Combatant and HMS Valorous) and launched in 1804. Designed by John Stainforth MP, they were flush-decked, shallow draught and (for their dimensions) heavily armed. Rated as a sloop, she had a design based on the Danish Praam (English Pram), allowing the combination of heavy armament with a draught of only 11 feet. Her design may well have been influenced by the flush-decked, shallow draught vessels of Napoleon's invasion fleet, although Dauntless and her sisters were significantly larger.

Dauntless entered service in March 1805, with the anti-invasion flotillas stationed in The Downs. In the spring of 1807 she and her sisters were ordered to the Baltic where their characteristics would be of value as convoy escorts and particularly in support of operations ashore. On 19 May 1807 Dauntless was ordered to sail up the Vistula and break through the French armies besieging Danzig (now Gdansk) in order to supply the encircled Prussians with 600 barrels of gunpowder. Heavily laden and making upriver under a press of sail, Dauntless became unmanageable and broached to. Running hard aground on a sandbank within easy range of French artillery, she suffered an hour's bombardment before surrendering. Napoleon himself is reputed to have said that her resistance "was worthy of being placed on the page of history". At the obligatory court martial her captain, Christopher Strachey, was honourably acquitted of all blame for the surrender of his ship.