HMS Crane (1806)

For other ships with the same name, see HMS Crane.

History
United Kingdom
Name	HMS Crane
Ordered	11 December 1805
Builder	Custance & Stone, Great Yarmouth
Laid down	February 1806
Launched	26 April 1806
Fate	Wrecked 26 October 1808
General characteristics [1]
Class & type	Cuckoo-class schooner
Tons burthen	751⁄94 (bm)
Length	56 ft 2 in (17.1 m) (overall) 42 ft 4+1⁄8 in (12.9 m) (keel)
Beam	18 ft 3 in (5.6 m)
Depth of hold	8 ft 3 in (2.5 m)
Sail plan	Schooner
Complement	20
Armament	4 × 12-pounder carronades

HMS Crane was a Royal Navy Cuckoo-class schooner of four 12-pounder carronades and a crew of 20. She was built by Custance & Stone at Great Yarmouth and launched in 1806. ^[1] Like many of her class and the related Ballahoo-class schooners, she succumbed to the perils of the sea relatively early in her career.

She was commissioned in 1806 under Lieutenant John Cameron for operations in the North Sea. ^[1] In May 1808 Crane sent into Plymouth the captured Danish vessel Justitia. ^[2]

In 1808 Crane was under a Lieutenant Mitchell, and then under Lieutenant Joseph Tindale. ^{[1] [a]}

At 7:30 pm on 25 October 1808 bad weather drove her from her anchorage at Plymouth. ^[3] She dropped a second anchor. By 4:00 am on 26 October 1808 she was near shore and got under way to make for the Sound. She returned three hours later to find an anchorage but a squall hit her as she went about. She let go an anchor but struck a rock off Plymouth Hoe. She fired her guns to signal distress, which brought out several boats from Plymouth Dockyard. ^[4] With some assistance she was refloated, but she went aground again. She sank in deeper water with her starboard gunwales just clearing the surface. ^[3] Boats picked up all her crew from the water. ^{[4] [5]} She was later broken up.

Notes

1. For more on Joseph Tindale see: O'Byrne, William R. (1849). "Tindale, Joseph"  . A Naval Biographical Dictionary . London: John Murray.

Citations

1. Winfield (2008), p. 361.
2. Lloyd's List, - accessed 26 November 2013.
3. 1 2 Gosset (1986), p. 67.
4. Hepper (1994), p. 126.
5. Grocott (1997), p. 263.

References

• Gosset, William Patrick (1986). The lost ships of the Royal Navy, 1793-1900. Mansell. ISBN   0-7201-1816-6.
• Grocott, Terence (1997). Shipwrecks of the revolutionary and Napoleonic eras. Chatham. ISBN   1-86176-030-2.
• Hepper, David J. (1994). British Warship Losses in the Age of Sail, 1650–1859. Rotherfield: Jean Boudriot. ISBN   0-948864-30-3.
• Winfield, Rif (2008). British Warships in the Age of Sail 1793–1817: Design, Construction, Careers and Fates. Seaforth. ISBN   978-1-86176-246-7.