HMS Pompee (1793)

Scale model of the Achille, sister-ship of HMS Pompee (1793), on display at the Musée de la Marine in Paris.
Career (France)
Name: Pompée
Namesake: Pompey
Builder: Toulon shipyard
Laid down: January 1790
Launched: 28 May 1791
Commissioned: February 1793
Captured: 29 August 1793
Career (UK)
Name: HMS Pompee
Acquired: 29 August 1793
Reclassified: Prison hulk in Portsmouth in 1816
Fate: Broken up in January 1817
General characteristics
Class and type:Téméraire-class ship of the line
Tons burthen:1,9018⁄94 (bm)
Length:182 ft 2 in (55.52 m) (gundeck)
148 ft 7 3⁄4 in (45.307 m) (keel)
Beam:49 ft 0 1⁄2 in (14.948 m)
Depth of hold:21 ft 10 1⁄2 in (6.668 m)
Sail plan:Full rigged ship
Complement:640
Armament:74 guns:

French service:

16 × 8-pounder long guns
4   36-pounder obusiers

British service:

  • Lower deck: 30 × 32-pounder guns
  • Upper deck: 30 × 18-pounder guns
  • Quarterdeck: 12 × 32-pounder carronades
  • Forecastle: 4 × 32-pounder carronades
  • Roundhouse: 8 ×18-pounder carronades

HMS Pompee was a 74-gun ship of the line of the Royal Navy. She had been built as Pompée, a Téméraire class ship of the French Navy. She was handed over to the British during the Siege of Toulon a few months after being completed, and spent the entirety of her active career with the British.

Service

During the Siege of Toulon, Captain Poulain, her commanding officer, joined the British. She fled Toulon when the city fell to the French Republicans and sailed to Britain under the temporary command of Lieutenant John Davie. She arrived at Portsmouth on 3 May 1794, and was registered on the navy list under an Admiralty order dated 29 October 1794.[1]

She commissioned as HMS Pompee under her first commander, Captain Charles Edmund Nugent, in May 1795 and entered service with the Channel Fleet after a period of refitting. From August 1795 she was under Captain James Vashon, and she was later one of the ships involved in the Spithead mutiny in 1797.[1]

Leviathan, Pompee, Anson, Melpomene, and Childers shared in the proceeds of the capture on 10 September of the Tordenshiold.[2]

Under Captain Charles Stirling, she fought at the Battle of Algeciras Bay in 1801. In 1807 the ship, under the command of Captain Richard Dacres served in the Mediterranean squadron under Rear-Admiral Sir Sydney Smith,[3] as part of the Vice-Admiral Duckworth's Dardanelles Operation and later the Alexandria expedition of 1807.

In late 1808 the Pompee was in the Caribbean, and took part in the capture of Martinique in January 1809

She later captured the brig Pylade on 20 October 1808, and her sister-ship Hautpoul on 17 April 1809.

She was fitted out for service as a prison hulk between September 1810 and January 1811.[1] She was finally broken up at Woolwich in January 1817.[1]

The acquisition of Pompée allowed the British to design a copy of the Téméraire class, the Pompée class.

See also

Citations and notes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Winfield. British Warships of the Age of Sail 1793–1817. p. 62.
  2. ↑ The London Gazette: no. 15704. p. 652. 22 May 1804.
  3. ↑ pp.15-20, Howard

References