HMS Basilisk (1801)
Encyclopedia
HMS Basilisk was a built by Randall in Rotherhithe and launched in 1801. She served during the Napoleonic Wars
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...
protecting convoys from privateers, conducting close-inshore surveillance and taking enemy coastal shipping. She served briefly at the end of the French Revolutionary Wars
French Revolutionary Wars
The French Revolutionary Wars were a series of major conflicts, from 1792 until 1802, fought between the French Revolutionary government and several European states...
, with most of her service occurring during the Napoleonic Wars
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...
. She was sold for breaking in 1815.
French Revolutionary Wars
In 1801 Basilisk was commissioned under Lieutenant Samuel Gooch (or Gooche), in the Channel. She served under Captain Cunningham in the frigate , who was senior officer between Le Havre and the Île de BatzÎle de Batz
The Île de Batz is an island off Roscoff in Brittany, France. Administratively, it is a commune in the Finistère department of Brittany in north-western France.-Population:...
.
On 16 August Basilisk and were at anchor, on station, between Barfleur and Marcou
Îles Saint-Marcouf
Îles Saint-Marcouf are a group of two small uninhabited islands off the coast of Normandy, France. They lie in the Baie de la Seine region of the English Channel and are 6.5 kilometres east of the coast of the Cotentin peninsula at Ravenoville and 13 kilometres from the island of Tatihou...
when they sighted two brigs and 17 gunvessels coming round Cape Barfleur. Gooch signaled to Captain Ross Donnelly of , who was closer and who proceeded in pursuit. The enemy ran into a bay west of the cape. There they anchored close to the beach where a battery and some field guns could fire in support of them. Basilisk and Bloodhound followed them and anchored in two fathoms. The two British vessels were within 18-pounder range and started firing. Maidstone, however, could not approach within range of her 12-pounder guns and so signaled Basilisk and Bloodhound to withdraw. Later, when the tide came in, the enemy rowed round the lighthouse and disappeared, while the wind and tide conditions prevented the three British vessels from following. When the British could find the enemy neither in Isigny nor within La Hogue, Cunningham surmised that they might have returned to Cherbourg and sailed there, where he found a number of French vessels and a convoy.
On 4 September Basilisk was in company with when they captured the Jonge Jan Schoon.
Napoleonic Wars
In February 1803 Basilisk came under the command of Lieutenant William Shepheard. On 24 June Basilisk, the sloop and the hired armed cutter Sheerness captured five French fishing vessels. By July Basilisk had assumed her station off Dunkirk in company with and .On 8 December, Basilisk and captured the Jussrouw Catherina. Jussrow Catherina was apparently a smuggling cutter.
On 18 December 1803, after a chase from daybreak to noon, Basilisk captured the French Gunboat
Gunboat
A gunboat is a naval watercraft designed for the express purpose of carrying one or more guns to bombard coastal targets, as opposed to those military craft designed for naval warfare, or for ferrying troops or supplies.-History:...
No. 436. She was armed with a brass 18-pounder gun in front and a howitzer aft. Her crew was under the command of Ensign de Vaissaeu Lewis Sautoin, and comprised seven sailors and a captain and 27 soldiers of the 36th Regiment of the Line. She had left Dunkirk the day before and was sailing to Boulogne.
On 22 October 1804 Basilisk was in company with when they recaptured the Frances.
The next day, Basilisk was in company with and when they found three praams, seven brigs and 15 luggers off Cap Griz Nez. The French convoy was sailing westward and keeping close inshore under cover of the batteries and an escort of horse artillery that followed them as they made their way to the Banc de Laine. Immortalite closed with the praams under the high land of Cap Blanc Nez
Cap Blanc Nez
Cap Blanc Nez is a cape on the Côte d'Opale, in the Pas-de-Calais département, in northern France. The cliffs of chalk are very similar to the white cliffs of Dover at the other side of the Channel in England...
, with Orestes and Basilisk joining in the attack. The running fight lasted for more than an hour before the falling tide forced the British to seek deeper water. The French convoy escaped, though possibly with some losses of men. Immortalite herself suffered one man killed, three men mortally wounded and eight others wounded.
When Shepheard was appointed to command the hired cutter
Hired armed vessels
right|thumb|250px|Armed cutter, etching in the [[National Maritime Museum]], [[Greenwich]]During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the Royal Navy made use of a considerable number of hired armed vessels...
Earl St Vincent
Hired armed cutter Earl St Vincent
Two vessels have been named the Hired armed cutter Earl St Vincent.The name Earl St Vincent comes from John Jervis, 1st Earl of St Vincent.-The first Earl St Vincent:...
, Lieutenant William Patey replaced him as captain of Basilisk.
In April 1805 a large British squadron was off Boulogne and between 24 and 25 April they captured a number of Dutch schuyts, some armed and some not. On 24 April, Basilisk shared with , , and , gun-brig and bomb vessels and in the capture of the unarmed Dutch schuyt No. 54. On 28 April, Basilisk, , Speedy, Orestes, Devastation, Lucifer, Tigress and captured the Sally, Williams, Master. Some party appealed the prize award and it took some years before the appeal was dropped. Next, Basilisk, Orestes, , Devastation, , , and captured the American ship Enoch on 14 June 1805. Then on 3 August, Basilisk was in company with Blazer, , Tigress, , Ariadne and when they captured the Frederick Wilhelm.
On 14 October 1805, Basilisk, then under Lieutenant George Higgs, was in company with and when Furious captured the Cornelia and her cargo of fish. Prize money was due 13 January 1810.
Around 1806 Basilisk was ordered north to be based at Leith in Scotland. Basilisk was in company with the gun-brig and Diligence when they captured the Mercurius, Thompson, Master, on 8 April.
Basilisk was at the second Battle of Copenhagen
Battle of Copenhagen (1807)
The Second Battle of Copenhagen was a British preemptive attack on Copenhagen, targeting the civilian population in order to seize the Dano-Norwegian fleet and in turn originate the term to Copenhagenize.-Background:Despite the defeat and loss of many ships in the first Battle of Copenhagen in...
on 7 September 1807. She therefore shared in the prize money for the capture of the Danish fleet. Prior to the battle, Basilisk participated in the capture of the Hans and Jacob on 17 August.
On 30 September 1808, while under the temporary command of Sub-Lieutenant Charles Balfour, Basilisk was escorting a convoy to the Shetlands when she captured the privateer Don Flinnke. Don Flinkke was armed with four 12-pounder carronade
Carronade
The carronade was a short smoothbore, cast iron cannon, developed for the Royal Navy by the Carron Company, an ironworks in Falkirk, Scotland, UK. It was used from the 1770s to the 1850s. Its main function was to serve as a powerful, short-range anti-ship and anti-crew weapon...
s and two swivel gun
Swivel gun
The term swivel gun usually refers to a small cannon, mounted on a swiveling stand or fork which allows a very wide arc of movement. Another type of firearm referred to as a swivel gun was an early flintlock combination gun with two barrels that rotated along their axes to allow the shooter to...
s, and had a crew of 24 men.
For the most part, Basilisk guarded convoys to Shetland and elsewhere. Then on 22 October, Basilisk and sailed to the assistance of the sloop , which the Dowlaw signal station, near Dunbar
Dunbar
Dunbar is a town in East Lothian on the southeast coast of Scotland, approximately 28 miles east of Edinburgh and 28 miles from the English Border at Berwick-upon-Tweed....
, reported had cut away her masts and bowsprit and thrown some of her guns overboard. Basilisk and Spitfire brought Cygnet back to Leith Roads.
Lieutenant Samuel Crew commanded Basilisk in 1809 and 1810. On 13 April 1809, Basilisk and took a Danish privateer of unknown name and the Danish galiott Jonge Anna Catherina. Also in late April or early May, boats from Pincher and Basilisk captured a galliot laden with deals near the Watt Sand.
On 20 May the gun-brigs Basilisk and , and the sloop captured three vessels: the Courier, Junge Catharina and a Blankenese
Blankenese
Blankenese is a former independent town, now a suburban quarter in the borough Altona in the western part of Hamburg . It is located on right bank of the Elbe river...
boat of unknown name.
In June 1809 Lord George Stuart placed Commander William Goate of Musquito
HMS Musquito (1804)
HMS Musquito was a Royal Navy Cruizer-class brig-sloop built by John Preston at Great Yarmouth and launched in 1804. She was commissioned in October 1804 under Commander Samuel Jackson. She served in the North Sea and the Baltic, and Jackson supervised the first successful rocket attack in Europe...
in command of a small force consisting of Musquito, the two Cherokee class brig-sloop
Cherokee class brig-sloop
The Cherokee class was a 10-gun class of brig-sloops of the Royal Navy. Brig-sloops are sloops-of-war with two masts rather than the three masts of ship-sloops...
s Briseis, Robert Pettet, and Ephira, Edward Watts, five gun-brigs, including Basilisk, one armed schuyt and a cutter. On 7 July they entered the Elbe
Elbe
The Elbe is one of the major rivers of Central Europe. It rises in the Krkonoše Mountains of the northwestern Czech Republic before traversing much of Bohemia , then Germany and flowing into the North Sea at Cuxhaven, 110 km northwest of Hamburg...
and anchored out of gunshot of the battery at Cuxhaven.
At daylight the following morning Goate, with the commanding officers, seamen and marines of their respective vessels, landed to attack the battery. However, the 80-man garrison retreated. The British seized the battery and hoisted the British flag; they also hoisted the Hamburg flag on the castle at Kitzbuttle. They then loaded the battery’s six 24-pounders into vessels lying in the harbor, together with some small cannons and all the shot and military stores. Next they undermined and blew up the battery. They also seized two French gunboats, each of two guns. Lastly, the landing party handed the town of Cuxhaven back to the civil governor before they embarked. In November 1813 proceeds of the captured stores, etc. from Cuxhaven were payable to , Basilisk and the other vessels of the squadron.
On 16 March 1810, Lieutenant Crew sailed Basilisk for the Mediterranean, where she was involved in several actions in southwest Spain and elsewhere. Lieutenant George Wood replaced Lieutenant Crew.
In 1811 Lieutenant Vallack was in command of Basilisk, with the British squadron at Cadiz. On 15 April a Spanish force left Cadiz to join General Beresford
William Beresford, 1st Viscount Beresford
General William Carr Beresford, 1st Viscount Beresford, 1st Marquis of Campo Maior, GCB, GCH, GCTE, PC , was a British soldier and politician...
at the approaching siege of Badajos. The British squadron's small vessels received the assignment to maintain communications. Lieutenant Vallack and his boat's crew drowned when they tried to cross the bar of the Guadiana River on this assignment. On 11 July 1811 Lieutenant George French took command. He then sailed Basilisk to Portugal on 4 March 1812.
In May 1812, Hyacinth
HMS Hyacinth (1806)
HMS Hyacinth was an 18-gun ship-sloop of the Cormorant class in the Royal Navy, launched in 1806 at Great Yarmouth. In 1810 she was reclassed as a 20-gun Post-ship...
and Termagant, Captains Thomas Ussher and Gawen William Rowan-Hamilton, and Basilisk supported Spanish guerrillas on the coast of Grenada. Termangant destroyed the castle at Nerja
Nerja
Nerja is a municipality on the Costa del Sol in the province of Málaga, Andalusia, southern Spain. It is on the country's southern Mediterranean coast, about 50 km east of Málaga.-History:...
on 20 May. The British squadron then supported a guerrilla offensive against Almuñécar
Almuñécar
Almuñécar is a municipality in the Spanish Autonomous Region of Andalusia on the Costa Tropical between Nerja and Motril . It has a subtropical climate...
. On 24 May with Hyacinth and Termagant, Basilisk took a French privateer of two guns and 30 or 40 men under the castle. The British squadron bombarded the castle, breaching the walls. The French then retreated to Grenada. Basilisk's only casualty was one man slightly wounded. Prize money for the "capture of a brass gun and the destruction of a French privateer, name unknown" was payable in February 1836.
Basilisk was re-rated as a sloop in May 1812 and re-commissioned under the newly promoted Commander George French.
Crew
While the captains of Basilisk changed regularly, some of the crew provided continuity. Royal Marine Abel Helps signed on to Basilisk 29 May 1802 as a corporal (ADM 96/216), was raised to sergeant 9 March 1805 (ADM 158/91), and disembarked at Portsmouth 16 Oct 1809 (ADM 35/2625), meaning he was on board for 7 years 5 months. By 4 November 1809 he had joined another ship, the frigate NyadenHDMS Najaden (1796)
HDMS Najaden was a frigate of the Royal Dano-Norwegian Navy, which she served from 1796 to 1807 until the British captured her in 1807. While in Dano-Norwegian service she participated in an action at Tripoli, North Africa. She served the Royal Navy as the fifth rate HMS Nyaden from 1808 until...
.
Fate
From the spring of 1814 Basilisk was fitted as a tender and came under the command of Lieutenant Philip Anstruther. When Anstruther died in August, Lieutenant Abraham Pike took command. She was sold for breaking for ₤730, probably at Plymouth, on 14 December 1815.External links
- Phillips, Michael: Ships of the Old Navy - HMS Basilisk (1801).http://www.ageofnelson.org/MichaelPhillips/info.php?ref=0290