HMS Cruizer (1797)
Encyclopedia
HMS Cruizer (often Cruiser) was a Royal Navy
Cruizer-class brig-sloop
built by Stephen Teague of Ipswich
and launched in 1797. She was the first ship of the class, but there was a gap of 5 years between her launch and the ordering of the next batch in October 1803; by 1815 a total of 105 other vessels had been ordered to her design. She had an eventful wartime career, mostly in the North Sea, English Channel and the Baltic, and was sold for breaking in 1819.
designed in 1796 by Sir William Rule, the Surveyor of the Navy
. Her hull was identical to the Snake-class ship-sloop, but she carried a pair of square-rigged masts instead of the three masts fitted in the Snake class. The original design had an armament of eighteen 6-pounder long guns
but it was soon decided to replace the broadside weapons with sixteen 32-pounder carronades, leaving two 6-pounders as bow chasers. The net effect was to increase the broadside weight of shot massively, at the cost of reducing her broadside's effective range.This was an innovation that the Royal Navy favoured at the turn of the 19th century for many small vessels. This mix became the pattern for all the other, later members of her class.
.The use of commercial ship yards for building the smaller vessels of the Royal Navy was normal practice of the time. She was laid down in February 1797 and launched on 20 December the same year.
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In March 1801 Cruizer (under the command of Commander James Brisbane
) sailed with Admiral Sir Hyde Parker's fleet from Yarmouth roads for Copenhagen. On 30 March Cruisers boat was used to buoy the narrow channel between Saltholm
and Middelgrund ("the Middle Ground" shoal), part of the waterway of Øresund between Copenhagen
and Malmö
. Brisbane impressed his immediate superior, Vice Admiral Nelson
, with this work, and was promoted to post captain after the subsequent battle of Copenhagen.
on the night of 8 March 1804, but she ran aground on the bar and was burnt to prevent her recapture. Cruizer and Rattler were soon again in action together off Blankenberge
; 13 armed vessels carried troops from the shore with the intention of boarding, but they were beaten back until the shallow water and the guns of the Ostend
batteries prevented further chase.
Later in 1804 Cruizer was used as the inshore vessel in the blockade of Flushing
, and as part of her duties she was required to report the movements of vessels in and around the harbour to the officer in command of the operation, Captain Sir Sidney Smith of Antelope. On 15 May 1804 Cruizer reported 22 vessels sailing from Ostend. By morning it was apparent that a flotilla of 59 vessels, comprising prams
, schooners and schuyts, had sailed from Flushing was making its way along the shallow coastal waters to Ostend. Cruizer and Rattler attacked that afternoon, just as the wind changed and forced the Dutch vessels to turn back for Flushing. The frigates Penelope
and Antelope attacked the leading vessels, and Aimable was sent to assist Cruizer and Rattler in dealing with the rearmost vessels. Surrounded by a host of small vessels, and operating in shallow water, the engagement lasted six hours, and Cruizer lost one man killed and three wounded. Much damage was done to the Flushing flotilla, although more sailors were killed in trying to destroyed the grounded vessels over the next few days than were lost in the engagement.
Cruizer captured the French privateer Contre Amiral Magon on 16 October 1804 after a chase of 100 miles. The gun-brig , the hired armed
brig Ann
and cutter Florence were also in company but fell behind in the chase. The French brig, under the command of Captain Blauckman, surrendered without a fight after Cruizer sent three warning shots from her 32-pounder carronades. She was quite new and on her first cruise. She was pierced for 18 guns but mounted 17: fourteen 6-pounder guns, two 18-pounder carronade
s, and one 9-pounder gun. Her crew of 84 men consisted of Frenchmen, Danes, Swedes, and Americans. (Of the 67 men aboard, 19 being away in prizes, seven of the Americans promptly joined the crew of the Cruizer.
Contre-Amiral Magnon had been out from Dunkirk 18 days and had captured the ship Belisarius, of Newcastle, the brig Scipio and Content's Increase. The last two had cargoes of coal and the privateer had sent them straight into Dunkirk. A British naval brig had recaptured Belisarius within two hours of her capture. The masters of all three British vessels, together with their crews, some 20 men in all, were on Contre Amiral Magon at the time of her capture and Cruizer took them on board. The Contre-Amiral Magon was sent into Yarmouth where she soon afterwards was wrecked by being driven on shore. Her crew were sent to prison, but Captain Blauckman remained aboard . He managed to escape and shortly thereafter returned to Dunkirk.
On 23 October 1804 Cruizer and her accompanying gun-brigs were in again action off Ostend with two small praams and a host of schuyts. Shallow water allowed the French to retreat as the tide fell and the gun-brig grounded. Her crew abandoned her but later returned together with men from Cruizer, the hired armed cutter Griffin, and some of the other ships in the squadron to try to recapture or destroy her. The cutting-out expedition was unsuccessful, with Cruizer suffering four officers and men wounded, Conflict losing one man killed and five wounded, and Griffin having two men wounded in the attempt.
The next year continued to be a busy time on blockade for Cruizer as she was in action 104 times with various enemy ships, coastal batteries and privateers. Cruizer was in company with the hired armed brig Ann
on 2 August 1805 when they captured the Frederick. Then on 22 August they captured the Susannah Margaretha.
On 13 November Cruizer intercepted two French pirate luggers attempting to take a brig. Hancock chased and after two hours captured the Vengeur after his bow guns brought down the lugger's main topsail and main-lugsail. She was under the command of Jean Augustim Hirrel, carried a crew of 56 men and was armed with 14 guns. She was two days out of Boulogne and had that day taken two Swedish brigs, one laden with salt, from Liverpool, the other from Boston, in Lincolnshire, in ballast.
In January 1806 Captain Hancock decoyed a number of blockade breakers off shore by disguising his ship as an American. Capturing one cutter, he used her to take a further six luggers and a schooner. After 5 successful years in Cruizer, Hancock was relived by Commander Stoddart.
On her way from from Walcheren
towards the Galloper Shoal in the North Sea, Cruizer spotted the 16-gun privateer lugger Brave and, after a long chase, drove her onto the beach three miles west of Blankenberge. Cruizers boats captured the privateer under musket fire and brought her off. One of the prisoners released from Brave was the master of the Tyne collier brig Leander, which Cruizer recaptured the same afternoon.
, and during the battle one of her lieutenants was killed. Commander George M'Kenzie took command later in the same year, and it was under his command that Cruizer, in company with Euryalus
, was convoying ships through the Great Belt
on 11 June 1808 when they sighted a number of Danish vessels at anchor near Korsør
. Boats from both ships attacked the Danes, despite the covering fire of a battery of three 18-pounder guns, and the presence of large numbers of Danish troops on shore. Two large transports were burnt and a gun-vessel captured, for the loss of one man slightly wounded.
From mid-1808 there is less information about her; that autumn, on 1 October 1808, Cruizer was off Gothenburg
when she was attacked by 20 gunboats. She captured one and drove off the others.
From November 1808 she was commanded by Commander Richard Toker. On 25 November she captured the Danish vessels Erndre, Prince Charles, Aurora, Lawrence Caroline, and Two Brothers.
In March and April 1809 she captured five prizes. On 13 March she captured the Albion. The next day she captured the Printz Frederick and the Erstotning. On 21 March it was the Unge Marias turn to fall prey. Lastly, on 9 April Cruizer captured the St. Johannes.
On 7 May 1809 she was off Baltiysk
(then called Pillau), with a letter for Louis Drusina (also known as Heinrich Hahn), a secret agent who had previously been British Consul. Cruizer captured the 6-gun Danish Christianborg on 31 May 1809. In September and October 1810 she brought four prizes (Schwan, Blanch, and Albertina and Byie) into Hulll
. She was in Yarmouth and the Nore in January 1811, refitted in Chatham in November 1811, was in Portsmouth in February 1812 and is recorded at Sheerness in 1814.
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...
Cruizer-class brig-sloop
Cruizer class brig-sloop
The Cruizer class was an 18-gun class of brig-sloops of the Royal Navy. Brig-sloops were the same as ship-sloops except for their rigging...
built by Stephen Teague of Ipswich
Ipswich
Ipswich is a large town and a non-metropolitan district. It is the county town of Suffolk, England. Ipswich is located on the estuary of the River Orwell...
and launched in 1797. She was the first ship of the class, but there was a gap of 5 years between her launch and the ordering of the next batch in October 1803; by 1815 a total of 105 other vessels had been ordered to her design. She had an eventful wartime career, mostly in the North Sea, English Channel and the Baltic, and was sold for breaking in 1819.
Design
Cruizer was a prototype brig-rigged sloop-of-warSloop-of-war
In the 18th and most of the 19th centuries, a sloop-of-war was a warship with a single gun deck that carried up to eighteen guns. As the rating system covered all vessels with 20 guns and above, this meant that the term sloop-of-war actually encompassed all the unrated combat vessels including the...
designed in 1796 by Sir William Rule, the Surveyor of the Navy
Surveyor of the Navy
The Surveyor to the Navy was a civilian officer in the Royal Navy. He was a member of the Navy Board from the inauguration of that body in 1546, and held overall responsibility for the design of British warships, although until 1745 the actual design work for warships built at each Royal Dockyard...
. Her hull was identical to the Snake-class ship-sloop, but she carried a pair of square-rigged masts instead of the three masts fitted in the Snake class. The original design had an armament of eighteen 6-pounder long guns
Naval long gun
In historical naval usage, a long gun was the standard type of cannon mounted by a sailing vessel, so called to distinguish it from the much shorter carronades....
but it was soon decided to replace the broadside weapons with sixteen 32-pounder carronades, leaving two 6-pounders as bow chasers. The net effect was to increase the broadside weight of shot massively, at the cost of reducing her broadside's effective range.This was an innovation that the Royal Navy favoured at the turn of the 19th century for many small vessels. This mix became the pattern for all the other, later members of her class.
Construction
Cruizer was ordered by the Admiralty on 19 December 1796 to be built in the commercial yard of Stephen Teague at IpswichIpswich
Ipswich is a large town and a non-metropolitan district. It is the county town of Suffolk, England. Ipswich is located on the estuary of the River Orwell...
.The use of commercial ship yards for building the smaller vessels of the Royal Navy was normal practice of the time. She was laid down in February 1797 and launched on 20 December the same year.
North Sea (1799 - 1800)
Cruizer operated in the North Sea during 1799, capturing the French privateers Jupiter, Chasseur, Deux Frères and Courageux between April and July. On 23 March 1800 under Captain Wollaston she captured the 14-gun French privateer Perseverant after a chase of 5 hours. The prize was sent into Yarmouth, and 2 days she repeated the feat by capturing the 14-gun Filibustier.Copenhagen (1801)
James Brisbane
Captain Sir James Brisbane, CB was a British Royal Navy officer of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Although never engaged in any major actions, Brisbane served under both Lord Howe and Horatio Nelson and performed important work at the Cape of Good Hope, prior to the Battle of...
) sailed with Admiral Sir Hyde Parker's fleet from Yarmouth roads for Copenhagen. On 30 March Cruisers boat was used to buoy the narrow channel between Saltholm
Saltholm
Saltholm is a Danish island in the Øresund, the strait that separates Denmark and Sweden. It is located to the east of the Danish island of Amager in Tårnby municipality and lies just to the west of the sea border between Denmark and Sweden. It is 7 km long and 3 km wide, covering an...
and Middelgrund ("the Middle Ground" shoal), part of the waterway of Øresund between Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
and Malmö
Malmö
Malmö , in the southernmost province of Scania, is the third most populous city in Sweden, after Stockholm and Gothenburg.Malmö is the seat of Malmö Municipality and the capital of Skåne County...
. Brisbane impressed his immediate superior, Vice Admiral Nelson
Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson
Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson, 1st Duke of Bronté, KB was a flag officer famous for his service in the Royal Navy, particularly during the Napoleonic Wars. He was noted for his inspirational leadership and superb grasp of strategy and unconventional tactics, which resulted in a number of...
, with this work, and was promoted to post captain after the subsequent battle of Copenhagen.
Blockade of the Netherlands (1803 - 1806)
Together with Jalouse and Immortalité she captured the French schooner Inabordable, the brig Commode and 2 gun vessels on 14 June 1803 after they had run aground under the guns of a shore battery for protection. Boats from Cruizer and Rattler cut out the cutter Colombe from SluisSluis
Sluis is the name of both a municipality and a town located in the west of Zeelandic Flanders, in the south-western part of the Netherlands....
on the night of 8 March 1804, but she ran aground on the bar and was burnt to prevent her recapture. Cruizer and Rattler were soon again in action together off Blankenberge
Blankenberge
Blankenberge is a town and a municipality in the Belgian province of West Flanders. The municipality comprises the town of Blankenberge proper and the settlement of Uitkerke.On 1 January 2010 Blankenberge had a total population of 18,907...
; 13 armed vessels carried troops from the shore with the intention of boarding, but they were beaten back until the shallow water and the guns of the Ostend
Ostend
Ostend is a Belgian city and municipality located in the Flemish province of West Flanders. It comprises the boroughs of Mariakerke , Stene and Zandvoorde, and the city of Ostend proper – the largest on the Belgian coast....
batteries prevented further chase.
Later in 1804 Cruizer was used as the inshore vessel in the blockade of Flushing
Flushing, Netherlands
Vlissingen is a municipality and a city in the southwestern Netherlands on the former island of Walcheren. With its strategic location between the Scheldt river and the North Sea, Vlissingen has been an important harbour for centuries. It was granted city rights in 1315. In the 17th century...
, and as part of her duties she was required to report the movements of vessels in and around the harbour to the officer in command of the operation, Captain Sir Sidney Smith of Antelope. On 15 May 1804 Cruizer reported 22 vessels sailing from Ostend. By morning it was apparent that a flotilla of 59 vessels, comprising prams
Pram (ship)
A pram or pramm describes a type of shallow-draught flat-bottomed ship.They were used in Europe during the 18th century, particularly in the Baltic Sea during the Great Northern War and Napoleonic Wars, as the pram's shallow draught allowed it to approach the shore. They typically carried 10-20...
, schooners and schuyts, had sailed from Flushing was making its way along the shallow coastal waters to Ostend. Cruizer and Rattler attacked that afternoon, just as the wind changed and forced the Dutch vessels to turn back for Flushing. The frigates Penelope
HMS Penelope (1798)
HMS Penelope was a fifth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy, launched in 1798 and wrecked in 1815.Under Sir Henry Blackwood, she took part in the battle of 30 March 1800 against the Guillaume Tell. Penelope was credited for engaging and dismantling the masts of Guillaume Tell with two raking broadsides...
and Antelope attacked the leading vessels, and Aimable was sent to assist Cruizer and Rattler in dealing with the rearmost vessels. Surrounded by a host of small vessels, and operating in shallow water, the engagement lasted six hours, and Cruizer lost one man killed and three wounded. Much damage was done to the Flushing flotilla, although more sailors were killed in trying to destroyed the grounded vessels over the next few days than were lost in the engagement.
Cruizer captured the French privateer Contre Amiral Magon on 16 October 1804 after a chase of 100 miles. The gun-brig , the hired armed
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...
brig Ann
Hired armed brig Ann
There were two, and possibly three, hired armed brigs that shared the name Ann . The first participated in an engagement in 1807 that would earn her crew the Naval General Service Medal. She is sometimes referred to in sources as the hired armed cutter Ann or the hired armed brig Anne...
and cutter Florence were also in company but fell behind in the chase. The French brig, under the command of Captain Blauckman, surrendered without a fight after Cruizer sent three warning shots from her 32-pounder carronades. She was quite new and on her first cruise. She was pierced for 18 guns but mounted 17: fourteen 6-pounder guns, two 18-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 one 9-pounder gun. Her crew of 84 men consisted of Frenchmen, Danes, Swedes, and Americans. (Of the 67 men aboard, 19 being away in prizes, seven of the Americans promptly joined the crew of the Cruizer.
Contre-Amiral Magnon had been out from Dunkirk 18 days and had captured the ship Belisarius, of Newcastle, the brig Scipio and Content's Increase. The last two had cargoes of coal and the privateer had sent them straight into Dunkirk. A British naval brig had recaptured Belisarius within two hours of her capture. The masters of all three British vessels, together with their crews, some 20 men in all, were on Contre Amiral Magon at the time of her capture and Cruizer took them on board. The Contre-Amiral Magon was sent into Yarmouth where she soon afterwards was wrecked by being driven on shore. Her crew were sent to prison, but Captain Blauckman remained aboard . He managed to escape and shortly thereafter returned to Dunkirk.
On 23 October 1804 Cruizer and her accompanying gun-brigs were in again action off Ostend with two small praams and a host of schuyts. Shallow water allowed the French to retreat as the tide fell and the gun-brig grounded. Her crew abandoned her but later returned together with men from Cruizer, the hired armed cutter Griffin, and some of the other ships in the squadron to try to recapture or destroy her. The cutting-out expedition was unsuccessful, with Cruizer suffering four officers and men wounded, Conflict losing one man killed and five wounded, and Griffin having two men wounded in the attempt.
The next year continued to be a busy time on blockade for Cruizer as she was in action 104 times with various enemy ships, coastal batteries and privateers. Cruizer was in company with the hired armed brig Ann
Hired armed brig Ann
There were two, and possibly three, hired armed brigs that shared the name Ann . The first participated in an engagement in 1807 that would earn her crew the Naval General Service Medal. She is sometimes referred to in sources as the hired armed cutter Ann or the hired armed brig Anne...
on 2 August 1805 when they captured the Frederick. Then on 22 August they captured the Susannah Margaretha.
On 13 November Cruizer intercepted two French pirate luggers attempting to take a brig. Hancock chased and after two hours captured the Vengeur after his bow guns brought down the lugger's main topsail and main-lugsail. She was under the command of Jean Augustim Hirrel, carried a crew of 56 men and was armed with 14 guns. She was two days out of Boulogne and had that day taken two Swedish brigs, one laden with salt, from Liverpool, the other from Boston, in Lincolnshire, in ballast.
In January 1806 Captain Hancock decoyed a number of blockade breakers off shore by disguising his ship as an American. Capturing one cutter, he used her to take a further six luggers and a schooner. After 5 successful years in Cruizer, Hancock was relived by Commander Stoddart.
On her way from from Walcheren
Walcheren
thumb|right|250px|Campveer Tower in Veere, built in 1500Walcheren is a former island in the province of Zeeland in the Netherlands at the mouth of the Scheldt estuary. It lies between the Oosterschelde in the north and the Westerschelde in the south and is roughly the shape of a rhombus...
towards the Galloper Shoal in the North Sea, Cruizer spotted the 16-gun privateer lugger Brave and, after a long chase, drove her onto the beach three miles west of Blankenberge. Cruizers boats captured the privateer under musket fire and brought her off. One of the prisoners released from Brave was the master of the Tyne collier brig Leander, which Cruizer recaptured the same afternoon.
Baltic (1807 - 1810)
From August 1807 Cruizer formed part of Admiral Gambier's inshore squadron for the siege of CopenhagenBattle 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...
, and during the battle one of her lieutenants was killed. Commander George M'Kenzie took command later in the same year, and it was under his command that Cruizer, in company with Euryalus
HMS Euryalus (1803)
HMS Euryalus was a Royal Navy Apollo Class frigate of 36 guns, which saw service in the Battle of Trafalgar and the War of 1812. During her career she was commanded by three prominent naval personalities of the Napoleonic and post-Napoleonic period, Henry Blackwood, George Heneage Dundas and...
, was convoying ships through the Great Belt
Great Belt
The Great Belt is a strait between the main Danish islands of Zealand and Funen . Effectively dividing Denmark in two, the Belt was served by the Great Belt ferries from the late 19th century until the islands were connected by the Great Belt Fixed Link in 1997–98.-Geography:The Great Belt is the...
on 11 June 1808 when they sighted a number of Danish vessels at anchor near Korsør
Korsør
Korsør is a Danish town and port. It is out on the Great Belt, on the Zealand side, just south of where the Great Belt Bridge lands. It was the site of the municipal council of Korsør municipality - today it is part of Slagelse municipality...
. Boats from both ships attacked the Danes, despite the covering fire of a battery of three 18-pounder guns, and the presence of large numbers of Danish troops on shore. Two large transports were burnt and a gun-vessel captured, for the loss of one man slightly wounded.
From mid-1808 there is less information about her; that autumn, on 1 October 1808, Cruizer was off Gothenburg
Gothenburg
Gothenburg is the second-largest city in Sweden and the fifth-largest in the Nordic countries. Situated on the west coast of Sweden, the city proper has a population of 519,399, with 549,839 in the urban area and total of 937,015 inhabitants in the metropolitan area...
when she was attacked by 20 gunboats. She captured one and drove off the others.
From November 1808 she was commanded by Commander Richard Toker. On 25 November she captured the Danish vessels Erndre, Prince Charles, Aurora, Lawrence Caroline, and Two Brothers.
In March and April 1809 she captured five prizes. On 13 March she captured the Albion. The next day she captured the Printz Frederick and the Erstotning. On 21 March it was the Unge Marias turn to fall prey. Lastly, on 9 April Cruizer captured the St. Johannes.
On 7 May 1809 she was off Baltiysk
Baltiysk
Baltiysk , prior to 1945 known by its German name Pillau , is a seaport town and the administrative center of Baltiysky District of Kaliningrad Oblast, located on the northern part of the Vistula Spit, on the shore of the Strait of Baltiysk separating the Vistula Bay from the Gdańsk Bay. Baltiysk...
(then called Pillau), with a letter for Louis Drusina (also known as Heinrich Hahn), a secret agent who had previously been British Consul. Cruizer captured the 6-gun Danish Christianborg on 31 May 1809. In September and October 1810 she brought four prizes (Schwan, Blanch, and Albertina and Byie) into Hulll
Kingston upon Hull
Kingston upon Hull , usually referred to as Hull, is a city and unitary authority area in the ceremonial county of the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It stands on the River Hull at its junction with the Humber estuary, 25 miles inland from the North Sea. Hull has a resident population of...
. She was in Yarmouth and the Nore in January 1811, refitted in Chatham in November 1811, was in Portsmouth in February 1812 and is recorded at Sheerness in 1814.