HMS Crane (1806)

Career (UK)
Name: HMS Crane
Ordered: 11 December 1805
Builder: Custance & Stone, Great Yarmouth
Laid down: February 1806
Launched: 26 April 1806
Fate: Wrecked 26 October 1808
General characteristics
Class and type: Cuckoo-class schooner
Tonnage: 75⅟94 (bm)
Length: 56 ft 2 in (17.12 m) (overall)
42 ft 4.125 in (12.9 m) (keel)
Beam: 18 ft 3 in (5.56 m)
Depth of hold: 8 ft 3 in (2.51 m)
Sail plan: Schooner
Complement: 20
Armament: 4 x 12-pounder carronades

HMS Crane was a Royal Navy Cuckoo-class schooner of four 12-pounder carronades and a crew of 20. She was built by Custance & Stone at Great Yarmouth and launched in 1806.[1] Like many of her class and the related Ballahoo-class schooners, she succumbed to the perils of the sea relatively early in her career.

She was commissioned in 1806 under Lieutenant John Cameron for the North Sea.[1] In 1808 she was under a Lieutenant Mitchell, and then under Lieutenant Joseph Tindale.[1]

At 7:30pm on 25 October 1808 she was driven from her anchorage at Plymouth.[2] She dropped a second anchor. By 4am she was near shore and got under way to make for the Sound. She returned three hours later to find an anchorage but a squall hit her as she went about. She let go an anchor but struck a rock off Plymouth Hoe. She fired her guns to signal distress, which brought out several boats from the dockyard.[3] With some assistance she was refloated but she went aground again. She sank in deeper water with her starboard gunwhale just clearing the surface.[2] Boats picked up all her crew from the water.[3][4] She was later broken up.

References

Citations
  1. ^ a b c Winfield (2008), p.361.
  2. ^ a b Gossett (1986), p.67.
  3. ^ a b Hepper (1794), p.126.
  4. ^ Grocott (1997), p.263.
Bibliography