Lower Upnor and Upper Upnor are two small villages in Medway, Kent, England. They are in the parish of Frindsbury Extra on the western bank of the River Medway. Today the two villages are mainly residential and a centre for small craft moored on the river, but Upnor Castle is a preserved monument, part of the river defences from the sixteenth century.
HMS Rattler was a 9-gun steam screw sloop of the Royal Navy, and one of the first British warships to be completed with screw propulsion. She was originally ordered as a paddle wheel 4-gun steam vessel from Sheerness Dockyard on 12 March 1841. She was reordered on 24 February 1842 as a propeller type 9-gun sloop from HM Royal Dockyard, Sheerness, as a new vessel. William Symonds had redesigned the ship as a screw propeller driven vessel.
HMS Highflyer was a 21-gun wooden screw frigate of the Royal Navy. She was built on the River Thames by C J Mare and launched on 13 August 1851. She spent twenty years in service, including action in the Crimean War and the Second Opium War, before being broken up at Portsmouth in May 1871.
HMS Nile was a two-deck 90-gun second-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, launched on 28 June 1839 at Plymouth Dockyard. She was named to commemorate the Battle of the Nile in 1798. After service in the Baltic Sea and the North America and West Indies Station, she was converted to a training ship and renamed HMS Conway, surviving in that role until 1953.
HMS Himalaya was built for the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company as SS Himalaya, a 3,438 gross register ton iron steam screw passenger ship. She was purchased by the Royal Navy in 1854 for use as a troopship until 1894 and was then moored in the Hamoaze, Devonport to serve as a Navy coal hulk until 1920, when sold off. She was sunk during a German air attack on Portland Harbour in 1940.
HMS Exmouth was a 91-gun screw propelled Albion-class second-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy.
HMS Amphion was a 36-gun wooden hulled screw frigate of the Royal Navy. She was initially ordered as a sail powered ship, but later reordered as a prototype screw frigate conversion.
HMS St Jean d'Acre was the Royal Navy's first 101 gun screw two-decker line-of-battle ship. She served in the Crimean War.
HMS Curacoa was a 31-gun Tribune-class screw frigate launched on 13 April 1854 from Pembroke Dockyard.
HMS Esk was a 21-gun Highflyer-class screw corvette launched on 12 June 1854 from J. Scott Russell & Co., Millwall. She saw action in the Crimean War, the Second Opium War and the Tauranga Campaign in New Zealand, and was broken up at Portsmouth in 1870.
HMS James Watt was a 91-gun steam and sail-powered second rate ship of the line. She had originally been ordered as one of a two ship class, with her sister HMS Cressy, under the name HMS Audacious. She was renamed on 18 November 1847 in honour of James Watt, the purported inventor of the steam engine. She was the only Royal Navy ship to bear this name. Both ships were reordered as screw propelled ships, James Watt in 1849, and Cressy in 1852. James Watt became one of the four-ship Agamemnon-class of ships of the line. They were initially planned as 80-gun ships, but the first two ships built to the design, HMS Agamemnon and James Watt, were rerated on 26 March 1851 to 91 guns ships, later followed by the remainder of the class.
HMS Basilisk was a first-class paddle sloop of the Royal Navy, built at the Woolwich Dockyard and launched on 22 August 1848.
HMS Vulcan was an intended iron-hulled screw frigate of the British Royal Navy, ordered from Ditchburn & Mare, Blackwall, London on 4 March 1845, to the shipbuilder's design, and had her keel layed on 12 March 1846. Measuring 1,747 tons burthen she had 14 gunports, was fitted with fore, main and mizzen masts, a funnel, a stump bowsprit, and a figurehead depicting a male figure holding a hammer. Following a trial on a target representing the side of the ship, it was decided that iron vessels were unsuitable for war purposes and, on 23 April 1847, Vulcan was ordered to be completed as a transport, with capacity for 677 troops. She was launched on 27 January 1849, and eventually completed on 3 March 1851. Vulcan was sold in 1867 as the barque Jorawur.
HMS Magicienne was the lead ship of her class of two 16-gun, steam-powered second-class paddle frigates built for the Royal Navy in the 1850s. Commissioned in 1853 she played a small role in the Crimean War of 1854–1855 and was sold for scrap in 1866.
HMS Tiger was a steam frigate of the British Royal Navy launched in 1849, which was lost in 1854 after grounding near Odessa during the Crimean War.
HMS Encounter was ordered as a First-Class Sloop with screw propulsion on 5 February 1845 to be built at Pembroke, in accordance with the design developed by John Fincham, Master Shipwright at Portsmouth. Her armament was to consist of 8 guns. She was to have a more powerful steam engine rated at 360 nominal horsepower. In 1848 she would be altered abaft and lengthened at Deptford prior to completion. A second vessel (Harrier) was ordered on 26 March 1846 but after her keel was laid at Pembroke Dockyard, her construction was suspended on 9 September 1846 then cancelled five years later, on 4 April 1851. Encounter had her armament radically altered in 1850 and she was broken up at Devonport in 1866.
HMS Arethusa was a 46-gun Leda-class fifth-rate frigate built for the Royal Navy during the 1810s. The ship was never commissioned and was converted into a lazarette in 1836. She was renamed HMS Bacchus in 1844 and was further converted into a coal hulk in 1851–52. The ship was sold for scrap in 1883.
The Shaftesbury Homes and Arethusa is one of the United Kingdom's oldest children's charities. It has been active since 1843. Its aim, written in its current mission statement, is to support young people in care and need to find their voice, to be healthy, to learn, develop and achieve and to gain an independent and positive place in society.
HMS Leander was a 50-gun frigate of the Royal Navy which saw service in the Crimean War.
HMS Desperate was originally slated to be built to the Sampson designed steam vessel rated as a Steam Vessel First Class (SV1); however, the Admiralty, first rerated the vessels as First Class Sloops on 19 April 1845 then on the 9 May 1845, she was ordered as First-Class screw sloops to be built from a design of Sir William Symonds, Surveyor of the Navy. She would be a 10-gun vessel with 400 NHP engines. She served in the Baltic during the Crimean war, and as a store ship to Edward Augustus Inglefield's Arctic expedition. She was broken up by 1865.
United Kingdom
