Sloop-of-war - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

In the 18th and most of the 19th centuries, a sloop-of-war was a warship

Warship

A warship is a ship that is built and primarily intended for combat. Warships are usually built in a completely different way from merchant ships. As well as being armed, warships are designed to withstand damage and are usually faster and more maneuvrable than merchant ships...

(also known as one of the escort

Escort

-Protection:*Police escort, a feature offered by law enforcement agencies to assist in transporting individuals.*Safety escort service, a service provided on and around many college and university campuses to help ensure the safety of students and staff....

types) with a single gun deck that carried up to eighteen guns. As the rating system

Rating system of the Royal Navy

The rating system of the Royal Navy and its predecessors was used by the British Royal Navy between the beginning of the 17th century and the middle of the 19th century to categorise sailing warships, initially classing them according to their assigned complement of men, and later according to the...

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 very small gun-brig

Brig

A brig is a sailing vessel with two square-rigged masts. During the Age of Sail, brigs were seen as fast and manoeuvrable and were used as both naval warships and merchant vessels. They were especially popular in the 18th and early 19th centuries...

s and cutters. In technical terms, even the more specialised bomb vessel

Bomb vessel

A bomb vessel, bomb ship, bomb ketch, or simply bomb was a type of wooden sailing naval ship. Its primary armament was not cannon —although bomb vessels carried a few cannon for self-defence—but rather mortars mounted forward near the bow and elevated to a high angle, and projecting their fire in a...

s and fireships were classed as sloops-of-war, and in practice these were actually employed in the sloop role when not carrying out their specialized functions.

In later years the type evolved; in World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

sloops were specialized convoy-defence vessels, with anti-aircraft and anti-submarine capability.

Rigging

A sloop-of-war was quite different from a civilian or mercantile sloop

Sloop

A sloop is a sail boat with a fore-and-aft rig and a single mast farther forward than the mast of a cutter....

, which was a general term for a single masted vessel rigged like what we would today call a gaff cutter

Gaff rig

Gaff rig is a sailing rig in which the sail is four-cornered, fore-and-aft rigged, controlled at its peak and, usually, its entire head by a spar called the gaff...

(but usually without the square topsails then carried by cutter-rigged vessels), though some sloops of that type did serve in the 18th century 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...

, particularly on the Great Lakes

Great Lakes

The Great Lakes are a collection of freshwater lakes located in northeastern North America, on the Canada – United States border. Consisting of Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario, they form the largest group of freshwater lakes on Earth by total surface, coming in second by volume...

of North America.

In the first half of the 18th century, most naval sloops were two-masted vessels, usually carrying a ketch

Ketch

A ketch is a sailing craft with two masts: a main mast, and a shorter mizzen mast abaft of the main mast, but forward of the rudder post. Both masts are rigged mainly fore-and-aft. From one to three jibs may be carried forward of the main mast when going to windward...

or a snow

Snow (ship)

A snow or snaw is a sailing vessel. A type of brig , snows were primarily used as merchant ships, but saw war service as well...

rig. A ketch had main and mizzen masts but no foremast, while a snow had a foremast and a main mast but no mizzen.

The first three-masted (i.e. "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....

") sloops appeared during the 1740s, and from the mid-1750s most new sloops were built with a three-masted (ship) rig.

Brig sloop

In the 1770s the two-masted sloop re-appeared in a new guise as the brig sloop. The successor to the former snow sloops, brig sloops had two masts while ship sloops continued to have three (since a brig

Brig

is a two-masted, square-rigged vessel and a ship is a square-rigger with three or more masts, though invariably only three in that period).

In the Napoleonic period Britain built huge numbers of brig sloops of the Cruizer class

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...

(18 guns) and the Cherokee class

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...

(10 guns). The brig rig was economical of manpower (important given Britain's chronic shortfall in trained seamen relative to the demands of the wartime fleet) and when armed with 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 (32-pounders in the Cruizers, 18-pounders in the Cherokees) they had the highest ratio of firepower to tonnage of any ships in the Royal Navy (albeit within the short range of the carronade). Consequently the Cruizer class were often used as cheaper and more economical substitutes for frigates. A carronade-armed brig, however, would be at the mercy of a frigate armed with long guns, so long as the frigate manoeuvered to exploit its superiority of range. The other limitation of brig sloops vis-a-vis post ships and frigates was their relatively restricted stowage for water and provisions, which made them less suitable for long-range cruising. On the other hand, their shallower draught made them excellent raiders against coastal shipping and shore installations.

Bermuda sloop

The Royal Navy also made extensive use of the Bermuda sloop

Bermuda sloop

The Bermuda sloop is a type of fore-and-aft rigged sailing vessel developed on the islands of Bermuda in the 17th century. In its purest form, it is single-masted, although ships with such rigging were built with as many as three masts, which are then referred to as schooners...

, both as a cruiser

Cruiser

A cruiser is a type of warship. The term has been in use for several hundreds of years, and has had different meanings throughout this period...

against French privateers, slavers, and smugglers, and also as its standard advice vessels, carrying communications, vital persons and materials, and performing reconnaissance

Reconnaissance

Reconnaissance is the military term for exploring beyond the area occupied by friendly forces to gain information about enemy forces or features of the environment....

duties for the fleets.

Bermuda sloops were found with Gaff rig, mixtures of Gaff and square rig, or Bermuda rig. They were built with up to three masts. The single masted ships, with their huge sails, and the tremendous wind energy they harnessed, were demanding to sail, and required large, experienced crews. The Royal Navy favoured multi-masted versions as it was perennially short of sailors, at the end of the Eighteenth Century, and such personnel as it had, particularly in the Western Atlantic (priority being given to the continuing wars with France for control of Europe), received insufficient training. The longer decks of the multi-masted vessels also had the advantage of allowing more guns to be carried.

Classification

A sloop-of-war was smaller than a sailing frigate

Frigate

A frigate is any of several types of warship, the term having been used for ships of various sizes and roles over the last few centuries.In the 17th century, the term was used for any warship built for speed and maneuverability, the description often used being "frigate-built"...

and was (by virtue of having too few guns) outside the rating system

Rating system of the Royal Navy

. In general, a sloop-of-war would be under the command of a master and commander

Commander

Commander is a naval rank which is also sometimes used as a military title depending on the individual customs of a given military service. Commander is also used as a rank or title in some organizations outside of the armed forces, particularly in police and law enforcement.-Commander as a naval...

rather than a post captain, although in day-to-day use at sea the commanding officer of any naval vessels would be addressed as "captain".
A ship sloop was generally the equivalent of the smaller corvette

Corvette

A corvette is a small, maneuverable, lightly armed warship, originally smaller than a frigate and larger than a coastal patrol craft or fast attack craft , although many recent designs resemble frigates in size and role...

of the French Navy (although the French term also covered ships up to 24 guns, which were classed as Post ship

Post ship

Post ship was a designation used in the Royal Navy during the Age of Sail to describe a ship of the sixth-rate that was smaller than a frigate , but by virtue of being a rated ship , had to have as its captain a post captain rather than a lieutenant or commander...

s within the Sixth Rate of the British Navy). The name corvette

Corvette

was subsequently also applied to British vessels, but not until the 1830s.

American usage, while similar to British terminology into the beginning of the 19th century, gradually diverged. By about 1825 the United States Navy

United States Navy

The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...

used "sloop-of-war" to designate a flush-deck ship-rigged warship with all armament on the gundeck; these could be rated as high as 26 guns and thus overlapped "third-class frigates," the equivalent of British post-ships. The Americans also occasionally used the French term corvette.

History

In the second half of the 19th century, successive generations of naval guns became larger and with the advent of steam-powered sloops, both paddle and screw, by the 1880s even the most powerful warships had fewer than a dozen large calibre guns.

In the 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...

, the sloop evolved into an unrated

Rating system of the Royal Navy

vessel with a single gun deck and three masts, two square rig

Square rig

Square rig is a generic type of sail and rigging arrangement in which the primary driving sails are carried on horizontal spars which are perpendicular, or square, to the keel of the vessel and to the masts. These spars are called yards and their tips, beyond the last stay, are called the yardarms...

ged and the aftermost fore-and-aft rig

Fore-and-aft rig

A fore-and-aft rig is a sailing rig consisting mainly of sails that are set along the line of the keel rather than perpendicular to it. Such sails are described as fore-and-aft rigged....

ged (corvettes had three masts, all of which were square-rigged). Steam sloops had a transverse division of their lateral coal

Coal

Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock usually occurring in rock strata in layers or veins called coal beds or coal seams. The harder forms, such as anthracite coal, can be regarded as metamorphic rock because of later exposure to elevated temperature and pressure...

bunkers in order that the lower division could be emptied first, to maintain a level of protection afforded by the coal in the upper bunker division along the waterline.

Revival

During the First World War, the sloop rating was revived by the British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

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...

for small warships not intended for fleet deployments. Examples include the Flower classes of "convoy sloops", those designed for convoy

Convoy

A convoy is a group of vehicles, typically motor vehicles or ships, traveling together for mutual support and protection. Often, a convoy is organized with armed defensive support, though it may also be used in a non-military sense, for example when driving through remote areas.-Age of Sail:Naval...

escort, and the Hunt classes

Hunt class minesweeper (1916)

The Hunt class minesweeper was a class of minesweeping sloop built between 1916 and 1919 for the Royal Navy. They were built in two discrete groups, the earlier Belvoir group designed by the Ailsa Shipbuilding Company and the subsequent Aberdare group designed by the Admiralty...

of "minesweeping sloops", those intended for minesweeping

Minesweeper (ship)

A minesweeper is a small naval warship designed to counter the threat posed by naval mines. Minesweepers generally detect then neutralize mines in advance of other naval operations.-History:...

duty.

The Royal Navy continued to build vessels rated as sloops during the interwar years. These sloops were small warships intended for colonial "gunboat diplomacy

Gunboat diplomacy

In international politics, gunboat diplomacy refers to the pursuit of foreign policy objectives with the aid of conspicuous displays of military power — implying or constituting a direct threat of warfare, should terms not be agreeable to the superior force....

" deployments, surveying duties and to act during wartime as convoy escorts. As they were not intended to deploy with the fleet, sloops had a maximum speed of less than 20 knots (39 km/h). A number of such sloops, for example the Grimsby

Grimsby class sloop

With the realisation that war was approaching, 13 Grimsby class sloops were laid down in the mid to late 1930s. Of these eight were built in the United Kingdom for the Royal Navy, four in Australia for the Royal Australian Navy and one for India...

and Kingfisher

Kingfisher class sloop

The Kingfisher class was a class of nine patrol sloops of the British Royal Navy built in three groups of three each during the 1930s, that saw service during World War II.- Design :...

classes, were built in the interwar years. Fleet minesweepers such as the Algerine class

Algerine class minesweeper

The Algerine-class was a class of minesweepers of the Royal Navy and the Commonwealth. 110 ships of the class were launched between 1942 and 1944 and served in World War II....

were rated as "minesweeping sloops". The Royal Navy officially dropped the term "sloop" in 1937, although the term remained in widespread and general use.

World War II

During the Second World War, 37 ships of the Black Swan class

Black Swan class sloop

The Black Swan class and Modified Black Swan class were two classes of sloop of the Royal Navy and Royal Indian Navy. Thirteen Black Swans were launched between 1939 and 1943, including four for the Royal Indian Navy; twenty-four Modified Black Swans were launched between 1942 and 1945, including...

were built for convoy escort duties. However, the warship-standards construction and sophisticated armaments of the sloop of that time did not lend themselves to mass production, and the sloop was supplanted by the corvette

Corvette

, and later the frigate

Frigate

, as the primary escort vessel of the Royal Navy. Built to mercantile standards and with (initially) simple armaments, these vessels, notably the Flower

Flower class corvette

The Flower-class corvette was a class of 267 corvettes used during World War II, specifically with the Allied navies as anti-submarine convoy escorts during the Battle of the Atlantic...

and River

River class frigate

The River class frigate was a class of 151 frigates launched between 1941 and 1944 for use as anti-submarine convoy escorts in the North Atlantic....

classes, were produced in large numbers for the Battle of the Atlantic. In 1948 the Royal Navy reclassified its remaining sloops and corvettes as frigates (even though the term sloop had been officially defunct for nine years).

Notable sloops

Perhaps the most famous sloop was HMS Resolution
HMS Resolution (Cook)
HMS Resolution was a sloop of the Royal Navy, and the ship in which Captain James Cook made his second and third voyages of exploration in the Pacific...

, in which Captain James Cook
James Cook
Captain James Cook, FRS, RN was a British explorer, navigator and cartographer who ultimately rose to the rank of captain in the Royal Navy...

made his second and third Pacific
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...

voyages. Cook called the Resolution "the ship of my choice", and "the fittest for service of any I have seen."

USS Independence
USS Independence (1776 sloop)
USS Independence was a sloop in the Continental Navy. Acting as a dispatch boat, she was sent to France on a diplomatic mission – carrying important dispatches...

, a sloop of the Continental Navy
Continental Navy
The Continental Navy was the navy of the United States during the American Revolutionary War, and was formed in 1775. Through the efforts of the Continental Navy's patron, John Adams and vigorous Congressional support in the face of stiff opposition, the fleet cumulatively became relatively...

which served on diplomatic missions to France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

. Independence was the first ship acquired by the Continental Congress
Continental Congress
The Continental Congress was a convention of delegates called together from the Thirteen Colonies that became the governing body of the United States during the American Revolution....

for use during the American Revolutionary War
American Revolutionary War
The American Revolutionary War , the American War of Independence, or simply the Revolutionary War, began as a war between the Kingdom of Great Britain and thirteen British colonies in North America, and ended in a global war between several European great powers.The war was the result of the...

. She captured two British prizes during her cruises to Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

.

HMS Beagle
HMS Beagle
HMS Beagle was a Cherokee-class 10-gun brig-sloop of the Royal Navy. She was launched on 11 May 1820 from the Woolwich Dockyard on the River Thames, at a cost of £7,803. In July of that year she took part in a fleet review celebrating the coronation of King George IV of the United Kingdom in which...

, a Cherokee-class brig-sloop re-rigged as a three-masted barque
Barque
A barque, barc, or bark is a type of sailing vessel with three or more masts.- History of the term :The word barque appears to have come from the Greek word baris, a term for an Egyptian boat. This entered Latin as barca, which gave rise to the Italian barca, Spanish barco, and the French barge and...

, is famous as the ship Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...

sailed around the world in between 1831 and 1836.

In 1804 Commodore Sir Samuel Hood, commissioned Diamond Rock
Diamond Rock
Diamond Rock is a 175 meter high basalt island located south of Fort-de-France, the main port of the Caribbean island of Martinique. The uninhabited island is about three kilometers from Pointe Diamant. The island gets its name from the reflections that its sides cast at certain hours of the day,...

, a small island south of Fort-de-France
Fort-de-France
Fort-de-France is the capital of France's Caribbean overseas department of Martinique. It is also one of the major cities in the Caribbean. Exports include sugar, rum, tinned fruit, and cacao.-Geography:...

in Martinique
Martinique
Martinique is an island in the eastern Caribbean Sea, with a land area of . Like Guadeloupe, it is an overseas region of France, consisting of a single overseas department. To the northwest lies Dominica, to the south St Lucia, and to the southeast Barbados...

, as HM Sloop-of-War Fort Diamond, following his establishment of a fortified garrison on the rock.

In 1805, HMS Pickle
HMS Pickle (1800)
HMS Pickle was a topsail schooner of the Royal Navy. She was originally a civilian vessel named Sting. of six guns, that Lord Hugh Seymour purchased to use as an armed tender on the Jamaica Station...

(a Bermuda sloop
Bermuda sloop
The Bermuda sloop is a type of fore-and-aft rigged sailing vessel developed on the islands of Bermuda in the 17th century. In its purest form, it is single-masted, although ships with such rigging were built with as many as three masts, which are then referred to as schooners...

) brought back news of the British victory at the Battle of Trafalgar
Battle of Trafalgar
The Battle of Trafalgar was a sea battle fought between the British Royal Navy and the combined fleets of the French Navy and Spanish Navy, during the War of the Third Coalition of the Napoleonic Wars ....

.

In 1805 Lord Cochrane
Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald
Admiral Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald, 1st Marquess of Maranhão, GCB, ODM , styled Lord Cochrane between 1778 and 1831, was a senior British naval flag officer and radical politician....

commanded HMS Speedy, a brig-sloop of 14 guns, through a series of famous exploits in the Mediterranean. The Speedy served as the inspiration for the fictional Jack Aubrey
Jack Aubrey
John "Jack" Aubrey, KB , is a fictional character in the Aubrey–Maturin series of novels by Patrick O'Brian. The series portrays his rise from Lieutenant to Rear-Admiral in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars. The twenty -book series encompasses Aubrey's adventures and various commands along...

's first command, the Sophie.

USS Eagle
USS Eagle (1812)
The second USS Eagle, a sloop, was a merchant ship purchased at Vergennes, Vermont on Lake Champlain in 1812 and fitted for naval service. The British captured her in 1813 and renamed her HMS Finch, only to lose her to the Americans at the Battle of Lake Champlain in 1814...

, a United States Navy sloop-of-war which was captured by the British in Canadian
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

waters. Later she was liberated by the U.S. Navy at the Battle of Lake Champlain.

In 1813, HMS Racoon
HMS Racoon (1808)
HMS Racoon, sometimes spelled HMS Raccoon, was an 18-gun ship sloop of the Cormorant Class of the Royal Navy. She was built by John Preston, of Great Yarmouth, and launched on 30 March 1808.-Service:...

was dispatched to Fort Astoria
Fort Astoria
Fort Astoria was the Pacific Fur Company's primary fur trading post in the Northwest, and was the first American-owned settlement on the Pacific coast. After a short two-year term of US ownership, the British owned and operated it for 33 years. It was the first British port on the Pacific coast...

at the mouth of the Columbia River
Columbia River
The Columbia River is the largest river in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. The river rises in the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia, Canada, flows northwest and then south into the U.S. state of Washington, then turns west to form most of the border between Washington and the state...

during the War of 1812
War of 1812
The War of 1812 was a military conflict fought between the forces of the United States of America and those of the British Empire. The Americans declared war in 1812 for several reasons, including trade restrictions because of Britain's ongoing war with France, impressment of American merchant...

to seize the post, which as it turned out had already been sold to the North-West Company; the fort was renamed by the ship's Captain Black as Fort George.

USS Wasp
USS Wasp (1814)
USS Wasp was a sloop-of-war that served in the U.S. Navy in 1814 during the War of 1812. She was the fifth US Navy ship to carry that name....

, a U.S. Navy sloop which served with distinction during the War of 1812
War of 1812
The War of 1812 was a military conflict fought between the forces of the United States of America and those of the British Empire. The Americans declared war in 1812 for several reasons, including trade restrictions because of Britain's ongoing war with France, impressment of American merchant...

. She is responsible for sinking or capturing at least four British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

warships and capturing several other merchant vessels. This within months of her commissioning and before her own sinking during a Caribbean
Caribbean
The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...

storm in October 1814.

In 1826, Karteria
Karteria
The Kartería was the first steam-powered warship to be used in combat operations in history. It was built in 1825 in an English shipyard for the revolutionary Hellenic Navy during the Greek War of Independence....

, acting as a warship of the Navy of the 1st Hellenic Republic under the command of Capt Frank Abney Hastings
Frank Abney Hastings
Frank Abney Hastings was a British naval officer and Philhellene.- Early career :He was the son of Lieut.-general Sir Charles Hastings of Willesley Hall, a natural son of Francis Hastings, 10th Earl of Huntingdon...

, was the first steam warship to see action. At the time the European armadas had no steam-warships.

USS Portsmouth a U.S. Navy sloop-of-war which served during the Mexican-American War in the California Campaign
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

. She participated in combat during the Second Opium War
Second Opium War
The Second Opium War, the Second Anglo-Chinese War, the Second China War, the Arrow War, or the Anglo-French expedition to China, was a war pitting the British Empire and the Second French Empire against the Qing Dynasty of China, lasting from 1856 to 1860...

, specifically the Battle of the Pearl River Forts
Battle of the Pearl River Forts
The Battle of the Pearl River Forts, or the Battle of the Barrier Forts, in late 1856, was an amphibious assault and short occupation conducted by the United States Navy against a series of forts along China's Pearl River...

. Later she served in the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...

, at the Battle of Forts Jackson and St. Philip
Battle of Forts Jackson and St. Philip
The Battle of Forts Jackson and St. Philip was the decisive battle for possession of New Orleans in the American Civil War. The two Confederate forts on the Mississippi River south of the city were attacked by a Union Navy fleet...

.

USS Constellation
USS Constellation (1854)
USS Constellation constructed in 1854 is a sloop-of-war and the second United States Navy ship to carry this famous name. According to the US Naval Registry the original frigate was disassembled on 25 June 1853 in Gosport Navy Yard in Norfolk, Virginia, and the sloop-of-war was constructed in the...

, an 1854 sloop which is currently a museum ship
Museum ship
A museum ship, or sometimes memorial ship, is a ship that has been preserved and converted into a museum open to the public, for educational or memorial purposes...

.

In 1949, HMS Amethyst
HMS Amethyst (U16)
HMS Amethyst was a Modified Black Swan-class sloop of the Royal Navy. She was laid down by Alexander Stephens and Sons of Linthouse, Govan Scotland on 25 March 1942, launched on 7 May 1943 and commissioned on 2 November 1943, with the pennant number U16...

, a Black Swan-class
Black Swan class sloop
The Black Swan class and Modified Black Swan class were two classes of sloop of the Royal Navy and Royal Indian Navy. Thirteen Black Swans were launched between 1939 and 1943, including four for the Royal Indian Navy; twenty-four Modified Black Swans were launched between 1942 and 1945, including...

sloop of the Royal Navy became involved in an international incident when she became trapped in the Yangtze River
Yangtze River
The Yangtze, Yangzi or Cháng Jiāng is the longest river in Asia, and the third-longest in the world. It flows for from the glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau in Qinghai eastward across southwest, central and eastern China before emptying into the East China Sea at Shanghai. It is also one of the...

by Communist Chinese
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...

shore batteries. She made a famous escape on 30 July 1949, later turned into a feature film Yangtse Incident: The Story of HMS Amethyst
Yangtse Incident (1957 film)
Yangtse Incident: The Story of HMS Amethyst is a 1957 British war film that tells the story of the British frigate HMS Amethyst caught up in the Chinese Civil War....

.

Rigging

Brig sloop

Bermuda sloop

Classification

History

Revival

World War II

Notable sloops

See also

External links