Camilla was commissioned in May 1776 and sailed for North America in August.[1] There she captured the privateer schooner Independence, John Gill, Master, of six carriage guns, eight swivels, and 50 men. She was on a cruise from Boston.[2][lower-alpha 1]Camilla also captured Admiral Montague, sailing from Hispaniola to Rhode Island with a cargo of molasses and coffee, Chance sailing to Georgia with coffee, and Polly, sailing to Surinam in ballast.[2]
On 20 February 1777, Camilla and Perseus, Captain George Keith Elphinstone, captured the 170-ton snow, Adventure. They captured her 99 miles (159km) northeast of Antigua, British West Indies, as she was going from Newburyport, Massachusetts to St. Eustatius, Netherlands West Indies, with a cargo of fish, staves, spermacaeti candles and pine planks.[4]Camilla fired eleven shots before Adventure would stop. Perseus and Camilla shared the prize money.[3] Eight days later, Camilla captured Ranger, William Davies, Master, which was sailing in ballast from St. Lucia.[5]Fanny, Adventure, and Ranger were all condemned and sold at Antigua.[3]
April 1777 was a busy month for Camilla. On 6 April she captured the brig Willing Maid, bound from St. Thomas, Danish West Indies, to Ocracoke Inlet, North Carolina, with a cargo of sugar, rum, and salt. However, the brig sprang a leak and sank. On 11 April 1777, Camilla was patrolling with the 44-gun frigate Roebuck near the mouth of the Delaware River, just north of the Cape Henlopen lighthouse, when they came upon the American merchantman Morris. Gunfire from the two British vessels drove Morris ashore, where she suddenly blew up with such force that it shattered the windows on the British vessels.[6] Reports indicate that Morris was carrying 35 tons of gunpowder and that the captain and six crewmen still on the vessel were laying a train of gunpowder to blow her up, when things went wrong. It is not clear whether the powder train burnt too quickly or a shot from Camilla or Roebuck set it off. What is clear is that the vessel disintegrated and all aboard her died in the explosion. Much of her cargo of arms was, however, salvageable, and Americans onshore were able to get it.[7]
On 15 and 20 April Camilla took two more prizes that were carrying rum, molasses and sugar, and molasses, respectively, but there are no details available.[5] On 21 April, she captured Perfect, Etienne Codnet, Master, bound from Cape Nichola, Hispaniola, with a cargo of molasses.[5] Then on 25 and 26 April she took two more unknown vessels, both carrying rum and rice.[5] She also captured Fonbonne, W. De Gallet, master, and W. Galley, owner, which was sailing from Cap-Français to Miquelon with a cargo of wine and molasses.[2]
In July 1777, boats from Camilla and Pearl captured and burnt the Continental schooner Mosquito.
Camilla captured several merchantmen in late 1777 or early 1778. On 15 November she captured the sloop Admiral Montague,[8] sailing from Hispaniola to Rhode Island with a cargo of molasses and coffee.[2] That same day, she captured Chance, Thomas Bell, master, which was sailing to Georgia with a cargo of flour and rum.[2] Lastly, on 14 March 1778, Camilla captured Polly, William Thompson, master, which was sailing to Surinam in ballast.[2][8]
When Philadelphia fell to the British in 1777, several American vessels found themselves trapped between the city and the British fleet further down the Delaware River. The Americans launched some three fire ships towards the British, but gunfire from Roebuck, Camilla, and other British vessels caused the Americans to set their ships on fire too soon, and to abandon them. British boats were able to pull the fire ships on shore where they could do no harm.
Recruiting poster from 1778 for Camilla
In February 1778 Captain John Collins took command of Camilla.[1] On 18 March, 1778 boats from HMSPearl and Camilla (now captained by Charles Phipps), captured the Pennsylvania Navy's armed boat Fame (A.K.A. No. 71), up a creek above Reedy Point.[9]Fame was armed with one 4-pounder cannon, four swivel guns, and two wall guns; she had a crew of 12 men under the command of Joseph Wade. Camilla then participated in two operations, one at Newhaven on 5 July and another at Penobscot from 21 July to 14 August.
Camilla then participated in the battle on 13–14 August, when Collier's squadron destroyed the American Penobscot Expedition.[11] She was amongst the vessels that shared the prize money for the capture of the American privateer Hunter.[12]
During the autumn Camilla captured the brig Chance, John M'Kay Master, off Cape Cod. The brig was sailing from St. Eustatius to Connecticut with a cargo of salt.[13] Around this time she also recaptured the Mackerel and Marquis of Rockingham.[3] On 12 October she captured the brig Revenge.[14]
In December Camilla sailed from New York to Charleston, South Carolina, with Vice Admiral Mariot Arbuthnot's squadron. Thus, spring 1780, found Camilla, Captain Charles Phipps, participating at the Siege of Charleston. The city capitulated on 11 May. Camilla shared in the prize money resulting from the naval captures.[15]
On 30 September, Camilla participated in the capture of the brigs Wasp, Potomack, and Portsmouth Hero, and the schooners Providence, Fanny and Betsey. Then on 1 November she took the schooner Henrico.[16]
On 19 April 1781, Camilla took the sloop Ann.[17]Camilla then sailed to join the Downs squadron. Captain J. Wainwright assumed command in November 1782. She was paid off in March 1783.[1]
Between the wars
Commander John Hutt of Trimmer received promotion to post captain and then in March 1783 recommissioned Camilla. He sailed her for Jamaica on 11 May 1783. While she was on the Jamaica station a mutiny occurred aboard Camilla. Five men received 800 lashes.[18]Camilla sailed back to Britain in 1784, but in December sailed for Jamaica again.[1]
In September 1790, Camilla was reported to have brought the Duke of Sudermania from Finland to the Swedish Royal Court at Drottningholm Palace.[19]
On 10 June 1795 two vessels came into Yarmouth. Both had been detained by Camilla, and both had been sailing from Copenhagen. The two were Catherine and Eliza, Sass, master, and Three Brothers, Peters, master.
On 15 February 1796 Camilla ran down and sank the merchant vessel Unity, of Hull, off the Goodwin Sands. Unity was on a voyage from South Shields to Lisbon.[21]
On 20 February 1797, Camilla captured Heros.[25] In March Captain Stephen Poyntz replaced Dacres. The next month, on 19 April, Diamond, Minerva, Cynthia, Grand Falconer, and Camilla captured the American ship Favourite, which was carrying a cargo of flour.[26] Then on 20 May, Camilla captured Jeanie.[25]
Generals Thomas Maitland and Toussaint Louverture meet to discuss a secret treaty, unknown artist, c.1800
On 4 May 1799, after a three-week voyage from Philadelphia, Camilla arrived at Cap-Français, Haiti, with the British General, Thomas Maitland on board. The British government had empowered him to pledge its support to General Toussaint Louverture.[28]
In January 1800 Camilla managed to take three prizes. On 6 January she took Jeune Aimie. Then six days later she captured Speculation, with the hired armed cutter Fly in sight.
During the evening of 29 January 1800, off Le Havre, Camilla captured the French privateer lugger Vigoureaux (or Vigoreaux). Vigoureaux was armed with three guns, had a crew of 26 men and was 19 days out of Cherbourg, not having taken anything.[29]HM hired armed cutterDuchess of York was in sight.[30]
Then on 15 March Camilla left Portsmouth as escort to a convoy for Newfoundland.
Later that year Camilla lost her mainmast in a storm while accompanying a convoy from Newfoundland to Britain. Though the storm scattered the convoy, Camilla arrived in Portsmouth, having found and escorted six vessels to Weymouth and Poole.[31] In December 1801 Captain E. Brace replaced Larkan, only to be superseded in 1802 by Captain Henry Hill.[1] Hill sailed Camilla from Portsmouth for Newfoundland on 29 July;[32] she returned to Portsmouth on 29 November.[33]
Napoleonic Wars
Captain C. Woolaston briefly replaced Hill.[1] Then in April 1803 Captain Brydges Watkinson Taylor took command of Camilla.[1] In May he sailed for Newfoundland.
On 15 August 1805, Camilla captured the French navy's brig-corvette Faune, of 16 guns and 98 men.[34]Camilla chased Faune for nine hours before capturing her at 45°18′N7°36′W / 45.300°N 7.600°W / 45.300; -7.600. The 74-gun, third rateGoliath had seen three sail and joined the chase, helping Camilla to capture Faune.[34][35] The Royal Navy took Faune into service as HMS Fawn.
Goliath, with Raisonnable in company, then sailed off to capture the French ship-corvette Torche on the next day.[36] In December 1805, Taylor moved to Thames, a new frigate, and Captain Clotworthy Upton replaced him.[1] In March 1806 Captain J. Tower replaced Upton.[1]
Between May 1807 and 1808 Camilla was in the Leeward Islands under the command of Captain John Bowen, who had taken command in July 1806.[1] On 2 March 1808, a party of about 200 marines and sailors from Cerberus, Circe, and Camilla, all under the command of Captain Pigot of Circe, landed near Grand Bourg on the island of Marie-Galante. The militia on the island quickly surrendered, together with their 13 guns, plus small arms and gunpowder.[37] Neither side suffered any casualties.[38] In 1825 the crews of Ulysses, Cerberus, Circe, and Camilla shared in the prize money arising out of the island's surrender.[lower-alpha 2]
Between 30 July and August 1809 Camilla was one of the many vessels participating in the debacle of the Walcheren Campaign.[1] On 3 November, Camilla, under temporary captain William Henry Dillon, encountered the Drie Gebroeders.[40] She was sailing from Norway under a Danish master and with a cargo of timber. On her deck were a number of wooden trucks for gun-carriages, which were obviously war material. The master stated that he was taking his cargo to Britain so Dillon let him proceed. After two hours, the merchant vessel was plainly heading toward the Dutch coast so Dillon caught up with the vessel and seized it. The master claimed that he was sailing toward Holland only to avoid "the Lemon and Oar", a dangerous reef in the North Sea. Dillon knew that the master's explanation was inconsistent with the vessel's position and so sent the vessel to Britain as a prize.[41]
Final years
Camilla was laid up in ordinary at Sheerness in December 1809, and then used as a floating breakwater. From 1814 to 1825 she served as a receiving ship until she was "laid aground for the protection of the waters".
The "Principal Officers and Commissioners of His Majesty's Navy" offered "Lying at Sheerness, Camilla, of 433 tons", for sale on 13 April 1831.[42] She sold on that day.
USS Wasp of the United States Navy was a sailing sloop-of-war captured by the British in the early months of the War of 1812. She was constructed in 1806 at the Washington Navy Yard, was commissioned sometime in 1807, Master Commandant John Smith in command. In 1812 she captured HMS Frolic, but was immediately herself captured. The British took her into service first as HMS Loup Cervier and then as HMS Peacock. She was lost, presumed foundered with all hands, in mid-1814.
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 Poictiers was a 74-gun Royal Navy third rate. This ship of the line was launched on 9 December 1809 at Upnor. During the War of 1812 she was part of the blockade of the United States. She was broken up in 1857.
Mutine was an 18-gun Belliqueuse-class gun-brig of the French Navy, built to a design by Pierre-Alexandre-Laurent Forfait, and launched in 1794 at Honfleur. She took part in the Battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, where the British captured her. She was recommissioned in the Royal Navy as HMS Mutine, and eventually sold in 1803.
HMS Acasta was a 40-gun Royal Navy fifth-rate frigate. She saw service in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, as well as the War of 1812. Although she never took part in any notable single-ship actions nor saw action in a major battle though she was at the Battle of San Domingo, she captured numerous prizes and rid the seas of many Spanish, French and American privateers. She was finally broken up in 1821.
HMS Niemen was a Royal Navy 38-gun fifth-rate frigate. She began her career as the Niémen, a 44-gun French Navy Armide-class frigate, designed by Pierre Rolland. She was only in French service for a few months when in 1809 she encountered some British frigates. The British captured her and she continued in British service as Niemen. In British service she cruised in the Atlantic and North American waters, taking numerous small American prizes, some privateers but mostly merchantmen. She was broken up in 1815, at the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812.
HMS Ariel was a 20-gun Sphinx-class sixth-rate post ship of the Royal Navy. The French captured her in 1779, and she served during the American Revolutionary War for them, and later for the Americans, before reverting to French control. Her French crew scuttled Ariel in 1793 to prevent the British from recapturing her.
HMS Lowestoffe was a 32-gun fifth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy. Built during the latter part of the Seven Years' War, she went on to see action in the American War of Independence and the French Revolutionary War, and served often in the Caribbean. A young Horatio Nelson served aboard her shortly after passing his lieutenant's examination.
HMS Porcupine was a 24-gun Porcupine-class sixth-rate post ship of the Royal Navy built in 1777 and broken up in 1805. During her career she saw service in the American War of Independence and the French Revolutionary Wars.
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 Surprise was a 28-gun Enterprise-class sixth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy, which served throughout the American Revolutionary War and was broken up in 1783.
HMS Kingfisher was the second ship in the 14-gun Swan class of ship sloops, to which design 25 vessels were built in the 1760s and 1770s. She was launched on 13 July 1770 at Chatham Dockyard, and completed there on 21 November 1770. She took part in the American Revolutionary War, enforcing the blockade of the Delaware Bay, and served in the Battle of Turtle Gut Inlet, near Cape May, New Jersey. While under the temporary command of Lieutenant Hugh Christian, she was burnt by her own crew to avoid capture on 7 August 1778 in Narragansett Bay during the Battle of Rhode Island.
Mutin was a 14-gun cutter of the French Navy, the lead ship of the Mutin class of five naval cutters. She was launched in 1778 and the Royal Navy captured her the next year, taking her into service as HMS Mutine. The Royal Navy renamed her HMS Pigmy in 1798. She was lost in 1805.
HMS Childers was a brig-sloop of the British Royal Navy, initially armed with 10 carriage guns which were later increased to 14 guns. The first brig-sloop to be built for the Navy, she was ordered from a commercial builder during the early years of the American War of Independence, and went on to support operations in the English Channel and the Caribbean. Laid up for a time after the end of the American War of Independence, she returned to service shortly before the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars. She had an active career in both the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, capturing numerous French privateers and during the Gunboat War participated in a noteworthy single-ship action. The navy withdrew her from service at the beginning of 1811, at which time she was broken up.
HMS Cameleon was a Royal Navy Diligence-class brig-sloop, launched in 1795. She was built of fir, which allowed for rapid construction, but at the expense of durability. She captured some small vessels and a privateer, and served in the Mediterranean before being laid up in 1805, and broken up in 1811.
The French brig Suffisante was launched in 1793 for the French Navy. In 1795 the Royal Navy captured her and took her into service under her existing name. HMS Suffisante captured seven privateers during her career, as well as recapturing some British merchantmen and capturing a number of prizes, some of them valuable. She was lost in December 1803 when she grounded in poor weather in Cork harbour.
HMS Diligent was a brig the Royal Navy purchased in 1777. The Continental Navy captured her in May 1779 and took her into service as the USS Diligent. She then participated in the disastrous Penobscot Expedition where her crew had to scuttle her in August to prevent her capture.
HMS Pearl was a fifth-rate, 32-gun British Royal Navy frigate of the Niger-class. Launched at Chatham Dockyard in 1762, she served in British North America until January 1773, when she sailed to England for repairs. Returning to North America in March 1776, to fight in the American Revolutionary War, Pearl escorted the transports which landed troops in Kip's Bay that September. Much of the following year was spent on the Delaware River where she took part in the Battle of Red Bank in October. Towards the end of 1777, Pearl joined Vice-Admiral Richard Howe's fleet in Narragansett Bay and was still there when the French fleet arrived and began an attack on British positions. Both fleets were forced to retire due to bad weather and the action was inconclusive. Pearl was then despatched to keep an eye on the French fleet, which had been driven into Boston.
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.
Belisarius was launched in Massachusetts in 1781. The British Royal Navy captured later that year and took her into service as HMS Bellisarius. She captured several American privateers, including one in a single ship action, before the Navy sold her in 1783. Her new owners sailed her as a merchantman between London and British Honduras. In 1787 she carried emigrants to Sierra Leone for the Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor, before returning to trading with Honduras. She was wrecked in September 1787.
References
Allen, Gardner Weld (1913) A naval history of the American Revolution. (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin).
Breverton, Terry (2004). The Pirate Dictionary. Gretna, La.: Pelican.
Colledge, J. J. Ships of the Royal Navy: The Complete Record of All Fighting Ships of the Royal Navy From the Fifteenth Century to the Present. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 1987. ISBN0-87021-652-X.
Dillon, William Henry & Michael Arthur Lewis (1956) A Narrative of My Professional Adventures. (London: Navy Records Society, 1953–1956).
Hahn, Harold M. (1988) Ships of the American Revolution and their models. (Annapolis, Md: Naval Institute)
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