The Swallow-class sloop was an 9-gun wooden screw 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...

 class of four ships built for 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...

 between 1854 and 1857.

Design

Built of a traditional wooden construction, the Swallow class were intended as "type of screw vessel below the Cruizer

Cruizer class sloop

The Cruizer class was a class of 17-gun wooden screw sloops built for the Royal Navy between 1852 and 1856, comprising six vessels.-Design:...

".

The class were armed with a single 32-pounder gun (58cwt) gun on a pivot mount and eight 32-pounder (25cwt) 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 on the broadside. These guns were all smoothbore muzzle-loading, and were little changed from the standard guns of Nelson's era.

Propulsion was provided by a two-cylinder horizontal single-expansion steam engine developing 60 nominal horsepower and an indicated horsepower of between 182 ihp and 224 ihp. Propulsion was applied through a single screw and at maximum power under steam, top speed was about 7 knots (13.7 km/h). A barque rig

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...

 of sails was carried, which meant the ships of the class had three masts with a square rig on the fore and main masts.

Ships

The first two ships were ordered on 5 July 1852, Ariel on 2 April 1853 and Lyra on 3 April 1854.

Name	Ship Builder	Laid down	Launched	Fate
	Deptford Dockyard	19 October 1852	31 May 1854	Sold for breaking on 39 August 1865
	Pembroke Dockyard	30 August 1853	12 June 1854	Became a survey ship in 1861. Sold for breaking in December 1866
	Pembroke Dockyard	November 1853	11 July 1854	Sold for breaking 23 May 1865
	Deptford Dockyard	8 July 1854	26 March 1857	Broken up in 1876