HMS Weazel

Eleven ships of the Royal Navy have borne the name HMS Weazel or HMS Weazle, archaic spellings of weasel, while another was planned:

• HMS Weazel was a 10-gun sloop launched in 1704 and sold in 1712.
• HMS Weazel was an 8-gun sloop launched in 1721 and sold in 1732.
• HMS Weazel was a 16-gun sloop purchased on the stocks and launched in 1745. The French frigate Boudeuse captured her in 1779 in the West Indies. The French took her to the French Antilles where they removed her guns for Admiral d'Estaing's squadron. They then sold her at Guadeloupe in 1781.^[1]
• HMS Weazle was a 14-gun brig-sloop launched in 1783 and wrecked while attempting to leave Barnstaple Bay on 12 February 1799. She vainly fired signals of distress before she broke up; her purser was the only survivor of her crew of 106 men and boys.^[2][3]
• HMS Weazel was a 16-gun brig-sloop launched in 1799 and purchased that year. She was wrecked on 1 March 1804 off Cabritta Point near Gibraltar with the loss of one man of her crew of 70.^[4]
• HMS Weazel was an 18-gun Cruizer class brig-sloop launched in 1805 and sold in 1815 for breaking up.
• HMS Weazel was a 10-gun schooner purchased in 1808 and on the navy lists until 1811.
• HMS Weazel was a 10-gun Cherokee class brig-sloop launched in 1822 and sold in 1844.
• HMS Weazel was a Dapper class wood screw gunboat launched in 1855 and sold in 1869.
• HMS Weazel was an Ant class iron screw gunboat launched in 1873. She became an oil fuel lighter in 1904 and was renamed C 118.
• HMS Weazel was a tender, previously the War Department vessel Sir W. Green. She was transferred to the Royal Navy in 1906 and was renamed HMS Stoat in 1918. She was sold in 1923.
• HMS Weazel was to have been a W class destroyer. The order was cancelled in 1918.

Citations

References

• Demerliac, Alain (1996) La Marine De Louis XVI: Nomenclature Des Navires Français De 1774 À 1792. (Nice: Éditions OMEGA). ISBN 2-906381-23-3
• Colledge, J. J.; Warlow, Ben (2006) [1969]. Ships of the Royal Navy: The Complete Record of all Fighting Ships of the Royal Navy (Rev. ed.). London: Chatham Publishing. ISBN 978-1-86176-281-8. OCLC 67375475. 
• Grocott, Terence (1997) Shipwrecks of the revolutionary & Napoleonic eras (Chatham). ISBN 1-86176-030-2
• Gossett, William Patrick (1986). The lost ships of the Royal Navy, 1793-1900. Mansell. ISBN 0-7201-1816-6.