HMS Crane (1806)

For other ships of the same name, see HMS Crane.
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 [1]
Class and type:Cuckoo-class schooner
Tonnage:75 1⁄94 (bm)
Length:56 ft 2 in (17.1 m) (overall)
42 ft 4 1⁄8 in (12.9 m) (keel)
Beam:18 ft 3 in (5.6 m)
Depth of hold:8 ft 3 in (2.5 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 May 1808 Crane sent into Plymouth the Danish vessel Justitia.[2]

In 1808 she was under a Lieutenant Mitchell, and then under Lieutenant Joseph Tindale.[1]

At 7:30pm on 25 October 1808 bad weather drove her from her anchorage at Plymouth.[3] 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.[4] With some assistance she was refloated but she went aground again. She sank in deeper water with her starboard gunwale just clearing the surface.[3] Boats picked up all her crew from the water.[4][5] She was later broken up.

Citations

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Winfield (2008), p.361.
  2. ↑ Lloyd's List>, - accessed 26 NOvember 2013.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Gossett (1986), p.67.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Hepper (1794), p.126.
  5. ↑ Grocott (1997), p.263.

References