HMS Halifax was a ship-rigged

Full rigged ship

A full rigged ship or fully rigged ship is a sailing vessel with three or more masts, all of them square rigged. A full rigged ship is said to have a ship rig....

 sloop

Sloop-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...

 of the Merlin class built in 1806 for the British Royal Navy

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...

 at the Naval Yard

Royal Naval Dockyard, Halifax

Royal Naval Dockyard, Halifax was a British Royal Navy base in Halifax, Nova Scotia from 1759 to 1905. The Halifax Yard was the main year round base of the Royal Navy's North American Station when first established in 1759 during the Seven Years' War....

 in Halifax, Nova Scotia

City of Halifax

Halifax is a city in Canada, which was the capital of the province of Nova Scotia and shire town of Halifax County. It was the largest city in Atlantic Canada until it was amalgamated into Halifax Regional Municipality in 1996...

. Built to fill a pressing need for coastal patrol sloops on the North American Station, Halifax was one of the few warships built at Halifax Naval Yard in the Age of Sail as the yard's primary function was supply and refit.

Service

Halifax was commissioned under Commander John Nairne, for the Halifax Station. In November 1806 Commander Lord James Townshend assumed command. She arrived in Plymouth on 16 January 1808 to make good defects. Townshend was promoted to post-captain

Post-Captain

Post-captain is an obsolete alternative form of the rank of captain in the Royal Navy.The term served to distinguish those who were captains by rank from:...

 on 2 January 1809. In 1809 Halifax was under the command of Commander John Thompson, and then in 1810 under Commander Alexander Fraser, still at Halifax.

A deserter from HMS Halifax, Jenkin Ratford, was one of the men seized from USS Chesapeake

USS Chesapeake (1799)

USS Chesapeake was a 38-gun wooden-hulled, three-masted heavy frigate of the United States Navy. She was one of the original six frigates whose construction was authorized by the Naval Act of 1794. Joshua Humphreys designed these frigates to be the young navy's capital ships...

 in 1807 during the controversial Chesapeake-Leopard Affair. Ratford was hanged from the yardarm of Halifax on August 31, 1807. In April 1809, Halifax captured a fast, new French schooner, Caroline, which was subsequently commissioned as HMS Caroline.

Fate

Halifax was laid up in ordinary

Reserve fleet

A reserve fleet is a collection of naval vessels of all types that are fully equipped for service but are not currently needed, and thus partially or fully decommissioned. A reserve fleet is informally said to be "in mothballs" or "mothballed"; an equivalent expression in unofficial modern U.S....

at Portsmouth form 1812 to 1814. She was broken up in January 1814.