HMS Wellesley (1815)

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Career (UK)

Name:	HMS Wellesley
Ordered:	3 September 1812
Builder:	Bombay Dockyard
Laid down:	May 1813
Launched:	24 February 1815
Renamed:	TS Cornwall, 1868
Fate:	Sunk, 1940
General characteristics
Class and type:	Black Prince-class ship of the line
Tons burthen:	1746 tons (1774 tonnes)
Length:	176 ft (54 m) (gundeck)
Beam:	47 ft 6 in (14.5 m)
Depth of hold:	21 ft (6.4 m)
Propulsion:	Sails
Sail plan:	Full rigged ship
Armament:	74 guns: Gundeck: 28 × 32 pdrs Upper gundeck: 28 × 18 pdrs Quarterdeck: 4 × 12 pdrs, 10 × 32 pdr carronades Forecastle: 2 × 12 pdrs, 2 × 32 pdr carronades Poop deck: 6 × 18 pdr carronades

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

HMS Wellesley was a teak built 74-gun third rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, launched on 24 February 1815 at Bombay Dockyard. She was named for the Duke of Wellington.

Wellesley saw active service in the Far East during the First Opium War and was for a time the flagship of Rear Admiral Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland.

In 1854 Wellesley became a harbour flag ship and receiving ship at Chatham, and in 1868 was loaned to the London School Ship Society by the Admiralty and refitted as a reformatory. She was renamed Cornwall and was moored off Purfleet. In 1928, due to industrial development at that location, she was moved to Denton below Gravesend.

On September 24, 1940 she was severely damaged during a German air-raid and subsequently sank; she was raised in 1948, and beached at Tilbury, where she was broken up. Some of her timbers were used in the rebuilding of the Royal Courts of Justice in London, while her figurehead now resides just inside the main gates of Chatham Dockyard.^[1]