A brig is a type of sailing vessel defined by its rig: two masts which are both square-rigged. Brigs originated in the second half of the 18th century and were a common type of smaller merchant vessel or warship from then until the latter part of the 19th century. In commercial use, they were gradually replaced by fore-and-aft rigged vessels such as schooners, as owners sought to reduce crew costs by having rigs that could be handled by fewer men. In Royal Navy use, brigs were retained for training use when the battle fleets consisted almost entirely of iron-hulled steamships.
During the 18th and 19th centuries, a sloop-of-war was a warship of the British Royal Navy with a single gun deck that carried up to 18 guns. The rating system of the Royal Navy covered all vessels with 20 or more guns; thus, the term encompassed all unrated warships, including gun-brigs and cutters. In technical terms, even the more specialised bomb vessels and fire ships were classed by the Royal Navy as sloops-of-war, and in practice these were employed in the role of a sloop-of-war when not carrying out their specialised functions.
HMS Hyacinth was an 18-gun Royal Navy ship sloop. She was launched in 1829 and surveyed the north-eastern coast of Australia under Francis Price Blackwood during the mid-1830s. She took part in the First Opium War, destroying, with HMS Volage, 29 Chinese junks. She became a coal hulk at Portland in 1860 and was broken up in 1871.
Six ships of the Royal Navy, and one shore establishment, have borne the name HMS Nimrod, after the biblical figure of Nimrod:
The Cruizer class was an 18-gun class of brig-sloops of the Royal Navy. Brig-sloops were the same as ship-sloops except for their rigging. A ship-sloop was rigged with three masts whereas a brig-sloop was rigged as a brig with only a fore mast and a main mast.
HMS Eclipse was a Royal Navy Cruizer-class brig-sloop built by John King at Dover and launched in 1807. She served off Portugal and then in the Indian Ocean at the capture of the Île de France. Shortly thereafter she captured Tamatave. She was sold for mercantile service in 1815. She traded with India until 1823. Then between 1823 and 1845 she made seven voyages as a whaler.
HMS Hazard was an 18-gun Favorite-class sloop of the Royal Navy. She was one of four Favorite-class ship sloops, which were a ship-rigged and lengthened version of the 1796 Cruizer-class brig-sloop. All four ships of the class were ordered on 10 June 1823. She was launched in 1837 from Portsmouth Dockyard.
HMS Charybdis was a Royal Navy Cruizer-class brig-sloop built by Mark Richards and John Davidson at Hythe, and launched in 1809. She captured two American prizes during the War of 1812 before she was laid up in 1815 and sold in 1819. She apparently then became the whaler Greenwich, which made three voyages for Samuel Enderby & Sons and one for Daniel Bennett & Son. She was wrecked in the Seychelles in 1833 on her fourth whaling voyage.
The Battle of Whampoa was fought between British and Chinese forces at Whampoa Island on the Pearl River near the city of Canton (Guangzhou), Guangdong, China, on 2 March 1841 during the First Opium War.
Admiral Sir Henry Smith was a British officer in the Royal Navy. He commanded the Aden Expedition in 1839 which took Aden as the first colonial acquisition of the reign of Queen Victoria. For this service he was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath. Smith was then sent to serve on the China Station, where he fired the first shot of the First Opium War at the Battle of Kowloon. He played an important role at the controversial Battle of Chuenpi later in the year, and as senior naval officer on the south coast of China fought the Battle of the Barrier. He later participated in the Battles of Second Chuenpi, the Bogue, and Canton, before forming part of the Amoy garrison after the Battle of Amoy. Having left China in 1843, he went on to command ships in the Mediterranean and then in the Baltic Sea during the Crimean War. Smith never served at sea again after obtaining flag rank in 1855 but became superintendent of the Royal Hospital Haslar and the Royal Clarence Yard. He was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in 1873, retiring in the same year.
The Aden Expedition was a naval operation that the British Royal Navy carried out in January 1839. Following Britain's decision to acquire the Port of Aden as a coaling station for the steamers sailing the new Suez-Bombay route, the Sultan of Lahej, who owned Aden, resisted, which led to a series of skirmishes between the two sides. In response to the incidents, a small force of warships and soldiers of the East India Company were sent to Arabia. The expedition succeeded in defeating the Arab defenders, who held the fortress on Sira Island, and occupied the nearby port of Aden.
Éole was an 18-gun corvette of the French Navy, launched, captured, and later commissioned in the Royal Navy in 1799 as HMS Nimrod after her capture by HMS Solebay. She was then "the finest and most handsome ship-sloop in the British navy". She was sold in 1811. Nimrod made three whaling voyages between 1811 and 1819. On her first she captured several American whalers. Nimrod was last listed in 1820.
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.
HCS Mahi was a schooner that the Bombay Dockyard launched in 1834 for the British East India Company (EIC).
HCS Coote was a sloop-of-war that served the British East India Company (EIC) during the 19th century. The Bombay Dockyard launched Coote in 1827. Though the EIC built Coote, her size and armament were equivalent to the retired Cruizer-class brig-sloops.
The Snake-class ship-sloops were a class of four Royal Navy sloops-of-war built in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Though ships of the class were designed with the hull of a brig, their defining feature of a ship-rig changed their classification to that of a ship-sloop rather than that of a brig-sloop.
Indian Oak was launched at Cochin, probably in 1813. She then traded between India and Britain. From circa 1824 she operated as a "country ship" trading primarily in the Indian Ocean. Notable events included arson by the crew, a dispute between her master and the government of Mauritius, transport of 200 labourers from Bengal to Mauritius, and mutiny that resulted in the cutting and maiming of her master. She was wrecked in August 1840 after having delivered troops to Chusan for the First Opium War.
Harriet was a former vessel of the British Royal Navy, probably the Cruizer-class brig-sloop HMS Harrier. The Navy sold her in 1829 and her new owners deployed her as a whaler in the British Southern Whale Fishery. She made three complete whaling voyages and was wrecked in July 1837 during her fourth.
HCS Palinurus was a sloop or brig that the Bombay Dockyard launched in 1823 for the Bombay Marine, the naval arm of the British East India Company. She served as a pilot ship, survey vessel mapping the Red Sea and the coast of Yemen and Oman, and generally as a naval ship. She was still listed in 1862.
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