Napoleonic Wars
She was commissioned in March 1807 under Lieutenant Augustus Vere Drury at Halifax, Nova Scotia. In April Sub-Lieutenant George Gover Miall, the commander of the schooner Chebuctoo, was ordered to act as Lieutenant-Commander of the Bream. [lower-alpha 1] Miall sailed Bream to the Leeward Islands. [lower-alpha 2] While Bream was in the Chesapeake Bay a mutiny broke out that Lieutenant Bartholomew George Smith Day helped suppress. Miall removed to Duguay Trouin on 15 June 1809. [lower-alpha 3]
On 15 July 1809, Lieutenant Henry Dilkes Byng took command, serving in Bream until October when Sir John Borlase Warren appointed him to command Goree, then in Halifax. He was confirmed in the command on 12 December. His replacement, in January 1810, was Lieutenant Robert Heriot Barclay. On 17 August 1810 her commander became (acting) Lieutenant John Simpson. [lower-alpha 4] Before Simpson could take command, Lieutenant Pollard assumed command for a short while. [8] While he was captain of Bream, Pollard left Halifax in August, arriving in Bermuda on 10 September. Bream brought with her the mails for Bermuda that the packet ship Diana had brought from Falmouth.
While in Bream, Simpson carried specie to St. John's, Newfoundland and was frozen up at Louisburg, Cape Breton, which materially harmed his health. On 14 November 1811 Simpson was promoted to Lieutenant.
War of 1812
Bream's first duty in the war was the return of the two remaining seamen taken from USS Chesapeake in 1807. The British government did this as a conciliatory measure, but Bream, under Simpson's command, returned the men to the US Navy at Boston on 11 July 1812, [10] nearly a month after war had already broken out between the two nations.
On 24 July, Colibri sighted three vessels off Cape Sable and gave chase to one, a schooner. When Colibri got close she exchanged signals with the schooner, which turned to be Bream. Colibri then chased and took two other vessels, which turned out to be an American privateer and a bark, her prize. The privateer was the Catherine; eight days out of Boston; she had taken only the bark. Catherine, under the command of Francis A. Burnham, was pierced for 16 guns but mounted 14 long six-pounder guns and had a crew of 88 men. She had suffered one man killed and one wounded before she surrendered. Her casualties were low as the crew had taken refuge below decks. [11]
On 9 August Bream captured the American 3-gun privateer sloop Pythagoras and her crew of 35, under the command of Cyrus Libby. The capture took place off Shelburne and took 20 minutes, during which the American suffered two men wounded. [12] [13] The Vice admiralty court in Halifax, Nova Scotia, condemned Pythagoras, of 42 tons (bm), Cyrus Libby, master, sailing from Saco, Maine.
In October Admiral Sir John Borlase Warren dispatched Shannon and Bream to rescue the crew and offload the money aboard the frigate Barbadoes, which had been wrecked on Sable Island. They arrived on 10 October and retrieved both crew (only one of whom had drowned), and the specie. Whilst carrying this out, Shannon encountered and subsequently captured an enemy privateer that she took back to Halifax with her. In October 1812 Simpson volunteered, with his whole crew, and joined Statira, under Captain Hassard Stackpoole, to cruise with her. However, Simpson returned to Britain as an invalid in 1813.
Lieutenant Constantine Brown replaced Simpson at Halifax. From late 1812 to 1813 Bream served in the Bay of Fundy as part of a small squadron under the command of Captain Alexander Gordon in Rattler. In November 1812, Bream and the privateer Brunswicker of Saint John, New Brunswick, chased four American privateers from Passamaquoddy Bay. [lower-alpha 5] Brunswicker's replacement was the sloop Hunter. She and Bream cruised down the Bay of Fundy on 16 December. [18]
Brown's replacement was Lieutenant Charles Hare. Under Hare's command Bream engaged in a successful campaign of guerre de course against American shipping on the Maine coast. Typical of the prizes made was the capture made on 23 April, when Bream captured the 85-ton (burthen) sloop Semiramis on her way to Boston from Portsmouth river. [19] Most of these captures were made off the Kennebec River in the general vicinity of Monhegan Island, but occasional forays further south were made. On 19 May, Rattler, with Bream's assistance, captured the American 18-gun privateer Alexander off Kenebank (Kennebunk, Maine). [20] Rattler drove Alexander, which was returning to Salem after a 10-week cruise, on shore. She had had a crew of 127 under her master, B. Crowninshield, but only 70 were still aboard when Rattler captured her. The rest of the crew escaped though several drowned as they swam from her. Bream helped Rattler get Alexander off. [21] Her prize crew took Alexander into New Brunswick. [22]
A week later, Bream captured the sloop Branch, of 78 tons, from Boston, bound to Dear Island. [19] (sic; Deer Isle, on the eastern side of Penobscot Bay). Most captures were unarmed cargo vessels, but on 9 June, Bream and Hare captured the American privateer Wasp. The 40-ton Wasp had two 6-pounder guns and a crew of 33. Capturing her required an eight-hour running fight, including a fifty-minute battle at close quarters off Brier Island in the Bay of Fundy. Wasp had been out 18 days but had captured nothing. Despite the exchange of fire, the only casualty was one wounded American. [24] Her captain placed the following advertisement in the Saint John, New Brunswick, Courier of 27 June:
A CARD - Lieut. Hare, Commander of H.M. Schooner Bream, is respectfully requested to accept the sincere thanks of Captain Ernest A. Ervin, commander of the American privateer Wasp, of Salem, for the very courteous, friendly and gentlemanlike treatment received while a prisoner on board, the deportment observed toward him being more like a friend and countryman than that of a declared enemy. - St. John, June 13, 1813. [25]
The head money for Wasp was finally paid in November 1831. [26]
On 12 July Bream took the schooner Jefferson, of 99 tons, out of Boston. Two days later Bream captured the Triton, of 122 tons, bound for Kennebeck from St. Thomas's. On the same day she captured the Betsey, of 117 tons, from Tortola and bound for Portland. [19]
On 21 or 24 September, the Canadian privateer Dart drove the American privateer Orange, a chebacco boat of two guns and 11 men, on to Fox Island in Machias Bay on the coast of Maine. [27] [lower-alpha 6] There the boats of Emulous and Bream destroyed her. [25]
Hare's replacement was again Lieutenant Constantine Brown, who remained in command until 4 February 1814 when Lieutenant Thomas Beer took command in the Bay of Fundy, and served with her until he was placed on half-pay in September.
On 27 May, Bream captured the Pilgrim. [29]
Beer commanded Bream at the capture of Moose Island (Maine) in July, and was present at the attack on Baltimore on 13 September. [30] [31]
Bream also shared in the prize money for the ship Abeona and the schooners Franklin and Saucy Jack, which other ships had captured between 21 October and 6 November. [32] Similarly Bream shared in the prize money for the schooner Mary and the goods from the transports Lloyd and Abeona, captured in the Chesapeake between 29 November and 19 December. [lower-alpha 7]
Bream was paid off in May 1815.
Nautilus was a schooner launched in 1799. The United States Navy purchased her in May 1803 and commissioned her USS Nautilus; she thus became the first ship to bear that name. She served in the First Barbary War. She was altered to a brigantine. The British captured Nautilus early in the War of 1812 and renamed her HMS Emulous. After her service with the Royal Navy, the Admiralty sold her in 1817.
Sir John Sherbrooke was a successful and famous Nova Scotian privateer brig during the War of 1812, the largest privateer from Atlantic Canada during the war. In addition to preying on American merchant ships, she also defended Nova Scotian waters during the war. After her conversion to a merchantman she fell prey to an American privateer in 1814. She was burnt to prevent her reuse.
HMS Fantome was an 18-gun brig-sloop of the Royal Navy. She was originally a French privateer brig named Fantôme, which the British captured in 1810 and commissioned into British service. Fantome saw extensive action in the War of 1812 until she was lost in a shipwreck at Prospect, Nova Scotia, near Halifax in 1814.
HMS Belvidera was a 36-gun Royal Navy Apollo-class fifth-rate frigate built in Deptford in 1809. She saw action in the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812 and continued a busy career at sea into the middle of the 19th century. In 1846 she was reduced to harbour service, in 1860 she became a receiving ship, and she was finally disposed of in 1906.
HMS Wolverine was a Royal Navy 18-gun Cruizer-class brig-sloop, launched in 1805 at Topsham, near Exeter. Early in her career she was involved in two fratricidal incidents, one involving a British frigate and then a newsworthy case in which she helped capture a British slave ship. She later captured a small naval vessel and several privateers, and took part in the invasion of Martinique, and during the War of 1812, in the attack on Baltimore. Wolverine was decommissioned in August or September 1815 and was sold on 15 February 1816.
HMS Sophie was an 18-gun Cruizer class brig-sloop of the Royal Navy. She served during the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812. During the War of 1812 Sophie participated in the economic war against American trade, capturing or destroying numerous small merchant vessels, and in an unsuccessful attack on Fort Bowyer, Alabama. Later, she moved to the East Indies where she served in the First Anglo-Burmese War. The Admiralty sold Sophie in 1825.
HMS Mosquidobit was the Chesapeake-built six-gun schooner Lynx that the British Royal Navy captured and took into service in 1813. She was sold into commercial service in 1820 and nothing is known of her subsequent fate.
HMS Chub was a British Royal Navy Ballahoo-class schooner of four 12-pounder carronades and a crew of 20. The prime contractor for the vessel was Goodrich & Co., in Bermuda, and she was launched in 1807. She and her crew were lost when she was wrecked in August 1812.
HMS Cuttle was a Royal Navy Ballahoo-class schooner of four 12-pounder carronades and a crew of 20. The prime contractor for the vessel was Goodrich & Co., in Bermuda, and she was launched in 1807. She was broken up in 1814.
HMS Emulous was a Royal Navy 18-gun Cruizer-class brig-sloop, built by William Row at Newcastle and launched in 1806. She survived an inconclusive but bloody battle with a French frigate during the Napoleonic Wars and captured a number of prizes, including two privateers, on the Halifax station during the War of 1812 before she was wrecked in 1812.
HMS Colibri was the French naval Curieux-class brig Colibri, launched in 1808, that the British captured in 1809 and took into the Royal Navy under her existing name. She spent her time in British service on the North American station based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. During the War of 1812, Colibri served mostly in blockading the American coast and capturing privateers and merchant ships. She foundered in 1813 in Port Royal Sound, South Carolina, but without loss of life.
HMS Canso was the American letter of marque schooner Lottery, launched in 1811, that a British squadron captured in 1813. The Royal Navy took Lottery into service as HMS Canso and she served during the War of 1812 and briefly thereafter. The navy sold her in 1816.
HMS Moselle was a Cruizer-class brig-sloop of the Royal Navy, launched in 1804. She served during the Napoleonic Wars in the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, and the North American station. She was sold in 1815.
HMS Rover was a Royal Navy Cruizer-class brig-sloop laid down in 1804 but not launched until 1808. She served in the North Sea, off the north coast of Spain, in the Channel, and on the North American station. She captured two letters-of-marque and numerous merchant vessels before being laid-up in 1815. She then sat unused until she was sold in 1828. She became a whaler that made four voyages to the British southern whale fishery between 1830 and 1848. She was last listed in 1848.
HMS Gleaner was the mercantile ketch Gleaner, launched in 1802. She served the Royal Navy as the "hired ketch Gleaner" from 12 July 1808 until the Navy purchased her in 1809. Initially she served as a light vessel and survey vessel. From early 1811 to August 1811 she served in the Mediterranean, where she captured an Ottoman vessel. She then became a yard lighter and a light vessel again. Then in 1812 she was on the North American station where she participated in the capture of several merchant vessels. Next she returned to the Mediterranean where she captured a privateer. Finally, she served off the north coast of Spain where she was wrecked on 2 March 1814.
Two vessels named His Majesty's hired armed lugger Sandwich served the British Royal Navy, one during the French Revolutionary Wars, and the other during the Napoleonic Wars.
HMS Indian was a Bermuda-built sloop launched in 1805. She captured several small privateers while on the West Indies and Halifax stations before the Royal Navy sold her in 1817. Her main claim to fame, however, is that she was the first command of future Rear-Admiral Charles Austen, who was also the brother of the famed novelist Jane Austen. After the Navy sold her she became a whaler for Samuel Enderby & Sons. She apparently sailed for them until the mid-1830s; she then sailed for other owners until mid-1847, for a total of nine whaling voyages since leaving naval service.
HMS Nimrod was a brig-sloop of the British Royal Navy, launched in 1812. She spent her war years in north American waters where she captured one small privateer, assisted in the capture of another, and captured or destroyed some 50 American vessels. After the war she captured smugglers and assisted the civil authorities in maintaining order in Tyne. She was wrecked in 1827 and so damaged that the Navy decided she was not worth repairing. A private ship-owner purchased Nimrod and repaired her. She then went on to spend some 20 years trading between Britain and Charleston, the Mediterranean, Australia, and India. She was last listed in 1851.
HMS Plumper was launched in 1807. She captured three small American privateers early in the War of 1812 but was wrecked in December 1812.
HMS Cockchafer was a United States schooner, possibly Spence or Spencer, that the Royal Navy (RN) captured and employed as a ship's tender. She captured two American armed brigs, one in a single-ship action. The Navy sold her in 1815.
United Kingdom