![]() Juno | |
History | |
---|---|
![]() | |
Name | HMS Juno |
Ordered | 21 October 1778 |
Builder | Robert Batson & Co, Limehouse |
Laid down | December 1778 |
Launched | 30 September 1780 |
Completed | 14 December 1780 |
Honours and awards | Naval General Service Medal with clasp "Schiermonnikoog 12 Augt. 1799" |
Fate | Broken up in July 1811 |
General characteristics [1] | |
Class and type | 32-gun Amazon-class fifth-rate frigate |
Tons burthen | 68929⁄94 (bm) |
Length |
|
Beam | 35 ft 2+1⁄4 in (10.7 m) |
Draught | 8 ft (2.4 m) |
Depth of hold | 12 ft 1+1⁄2 in (3.7 m) |
Sail plan | Full-rigged ship |
Complement | 220 |
Armament |
|
HMS Juno was a Royal Navy 32-gun Amazon-class fifth rate. This frigate served during the American War of Independence, and the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.
Juno was ordered on 21 October 1778 and laid down in December that year at the yards of the shipbuilder Robert Batson & Co, of Limehouse. [1] She was launched on 30 September 1780 and completed by 14 December 1780 that year at Deptford Dockyard. [2] £8,500 1s 5d was paid to the builder, with a further £8,184 18s 1d being spent on fitting her out and having her coppered. [1]
Juno was commissioned under the command of her first captain, James Montagu, in September 1780. [1] Montagu commanded her for the next five years, initially in British waters and the Atlantic.
On 10 February 1781 Juno and the sloop Zebra captured the American privateer Revanche (or Revenge) off Beachy Head. [3] Montagu then sailed the Juno in early 1782 to join Richard Bickerton's squadron operating in the East Indies. [1]
She was present at the Battle of Cuddalore on 20 June 1783, and returned to Britain to be paid off in March 1785. After fitting out the following month Juno was placed in ordinary. [1] She spent the next five years in this state, with the exception of a small repair at Woolwich Dockyard in 1788 at a cost of £9,042. [1]
Juno returned to active service in May 1790, now under the command of Captain Samuel Hood. [1] Hood sailed to Jamaica in mid-1790, but had returned to Britain and paid off the Juno in September 1791. Hood however remained in command, and the Juno was fitted out and recommissioned, undergoing a refit at Portsmouth in January 1793. [1] Hood initially cruised in the English Channel after the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars, capturing the privateers Entreprenant on 17 February, Palme on 2 March and, together with HMS Aimable, Laborieux in April. [1]
Hood was then transferred to the Mediterranean in May 1793.
Juno was at Toulon during its period of British control under Samuel Hood, Juno's captain's cousin once removed. Unaware that Toulon had fallen to French republican forces, and desiring to deliver 107 Maltese and 46 Marines embarked in Malta to reinforce Lord Hood's forces, Captain Hood sailed into the port at night on 11 January 1794, several days after the evacuation of the British forces. [4] [5] After anchoring, Juno was boarded by 13 armed men. [6] [7] On being informed that British forces had left and that he and his ship's company were now prisoners of war, Captain Hood ordered cables to be cut and immediately set sail with the 13 French officials aboard as prisoners, whereupon Juno received a broadside from a nearby brig and came under point-blank fire from French batteries, but was able to escape with only light damage. [5]
On 7 February 1794 Juno and the 74-gun HMS Fortitude carried out an attack on a tower at Mortella Point, on the coast of Corsica. [4] The design of the tower allowed it to hold out against the British for several days, and inspired the design of the subsequent Martello Towers constructed in Great Britain and other British possessions. [8]
Captain Lord Amelius Beauclerk succeeded Hood, who returned to Britain with a convoy in October 1795, and paid her off in January the following year. [4]
Juno was repaired and refitted at Deptford for the sum of £20,442. She was recommissioned in August 1798 under the command of Captain George Dundas. [4] She operated with a British squadron in Anglo-Russian invasion of Holland in August 1799 that resulted in the surrender on 13 August, without firing of a shot, of a Dutch squadron of one small 74, six 64s, two 50s, and six 44s, five frigates, three corvettes, and one brig.
On 11 August 1799, the 16-gun sloop Pylades, under Captain Adam Mackenzie, the 16-gun brig-sloop Espiegle, under Captain James Boorder, the 12-gun hired cutter Courier, and Juno and Latona, which sent their boats, mounted an attack on Crash, which was moored between the island of Schiermonnikoog and Groningen. [9] [10]
Pylades and Espiegle engaged Crash, which surrendered after a strong resistance. MacKenzie immediately put Crash into service under Lieutenant James Slade, Latona's first lieutenant. [10] In the attack, Pylades lost one man killed and three wounded. Juno lost one man killed when the boats attacked a gun-schooner. [10]
The next day the British captured one schyut and burnt a second. MacKenzie put Lieutenant Salusbury Pryce Humphreys of Juno on the captured schuyt after arming her with two 12-pounder carronades and naming her the Undaunted. [10]
On 13 August the British attacked the Dutch schooner Vengeance (or Weerwrack or Waarwrick), of six cannons (two of them 24-pounders), and a battery on Schiermonnikoog. [10] The British were able to burn the Vengeance and spike the battery's four guns. [9] They also captured a rowboat with 30 men and two brass 4-pounder field pieces, [9] and spiked another 12-pounder. [10] The Courier grounded but was saved. Including Undaunted, the British captured three schuyts or galiots, the Vier Vendou, the Jonge Gessina and one other. [11] The battle would earn those seamen who survived until 1847 the Naval General Service Medal with clasp "Schiermonnikoog 12 Augt. 1799". [12]
On 12 February 1800 Juno and Busy sailed for Jamaica as escorts to a convoy of 150 merchant vessels. [13]
On 2 June Juno and Melampus, were in company when they captured Volante. [lower-alpha 1] On 1 October Juno, Melampus, and Retribution were in company when they captured the Aquila. [lower-alpha 2]
Captain Isaac Manley took command in 1802, paying off Juno in the middle of the year. [4] A further refit followed, with Juno returning to sea under the command of Captain Henry Richardson. Richardson took Juno to the Mediterranean in April 1803. Between 1 and 3 August 1803, Juno and Morgiana captured three vessels: Santissima Trinita, Parthenope, and Famosa. [15] Then on the 21st, Juno and Morgiana captured San Giorgio. [16]
On 8 September Juno was eight leagues off Cape Sparivento when she captured the French bombarde privateer Quatre Fils, of Nice. Quatre Fils was armed with four guns (12 and 9-pounders), and had a crew of 78 men. [17]
In 1805 Juno and several other frigates and sloops arrived at Gibraltar where Nelson employed them to harass coastal shipping that was resupplying the Franco-Spanish fleet at Cadiz.
In 1806 Juno was then active in the Bay of Naples, supporting Sidney Smith's operations there. [4] When Smith had arrived in Palermo on 21 April 1806 he found that Gaeta still held out against the French even though the Neapolitan government had had to cede the capital. Smith had immediately sent two convoys to Gaeta with supplies and ammunition and landed four 32-poundeer guns from Excellent. Smith also stationed Juno off Gaeta, where she was in a flotilla together with the Neapolitan frigate Minerva, Captain Vieugna, and 12 Neapolitan gun-boats.
Next, the French erected a battery of four guns on the point of La Madona della Catena. The Prince of Hesse-Philipstad put 60 men from the garrison at Gaeta in four fishing-boats and on the night of 12 May Richardson took them and the boats from Juno and Minerva to a small bay in the French rear. As the boats reached shore, the French signaled the attack and abandoned the battery. The landing party spiked the guns and destroyed the carriages unopposed. It then re-embarked, having sustained no losses. [18]
On 15 May the garrison at Gaeta made another modestly successful sortie. Two divisions of gunboats supported the operation. Richardson commanded one division. Juno's boats, under the command of Lieutenant Thomas Wells, assisted by Lieutenant of marines Robert M. Mant joined the attack. Juno's boats sustained the allies' only loss, which consisted of four seamen killed and five wounded. [18]
On 18 July 1806 the French under André Masséna captured Gaeta after an heroic defence. In 1809 it became a duché grand-fief in the Napoleonic Kingdom of Naples, but under the French name "Gaete", for finance minister Martin-Michel-Charles Gaudin.
Captain Charles Schomberg succeeded Richardson in February 1807. Captain Granville Proby replaced Schomberg in July that year, with orders to sail Juno back to Britain. She was placed in ordinary at Woolwich after her arrival, and was broken up there in July 1811. [2] [4]
HMS Speedy was a 14-gun Speedy-class brig of the British Royal Navy. Built during the last years of the American War of Independence, she served with distinction during the French Revolutionary Wars.
HMS Centaur was a 74-gun third rate of the Royal Navy, launched on 14 March 1797 at Woolwich. She served as Sir Samuel Hood's flagship in the Leeward Islands and the Channel. During her 22-year career Centaur saw action in the Mediterranean, the Channel, the West Indies, and the Baltic, fighting the French, the Dutch, the Danes, and the Russians. She was broken up in 1819.
HMS Pompee was a 74-gun ship of the line of the British Royal Navy. Built as Pompée, a Téméraire-class ship of the French Navy, she was handed over to the British at Spithead by French royalists who had fled France after the Siege of Toulon by the French Republic, only a few months after being completed. After reaching Great Britain, Pompée was registered and recommissioned as HMS Pompee and spent the entirety of her active career with the Royal Navy until she was broken up in 1817.
HMS Phoenix was a 36-gun Perseverance-class fifth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy. The shipbuilder George Parsons built her at Bursledon and launched her on 15 July 1783. She served in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars and was instrumental in the events leading up to the battle of Trafalgar. Phoenix was involved in several single-ship actions, the most notable occurring on 10 August 1805 when she captured the French frigate Didon, which was more heavily armed than her. She was wrecked, without loss of life, off Smyrna in 1816.
HMS Meleager was a 32-gun Amazon-class frigate' that Greaves and Nickolson built in 1785 at the Quarry House yard in Frindsbury, Kent, England. She served during the French Revolutionary Wars until 1801, when she was wrecked in the Gulf of Mexico.
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.
Égyptienne was a French frigate launched at Toulon in 1799. Her first service was in Napoleon's Egyptian campaign of 1801, in which the British captured her at Alexandria. She famously carried the Rosetta Stone to Woolwich, and then the Admiralty commissioned her into the Royal Navy as the 40-gun fifth-rate frigate HMS Egyptienne. She served in a number of single-ship actions before being reduced to harbour service in 1807, and was sold for breaking in 1817.
Captain Adam Mackenzie was an officer of the British Royal Navy who served during the American, French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, being present at numerous fleet actions, as well as serving as successful ship captain.
HMS Crash was a 12-gun Acute-class gun-brig. She was launched in April 1797 as GB No. 15 and received the name Crash in August. She served against the French and Dutch in the Napoleonic Wars, though after her capture in 1798 she spent a year in the service of the Batavian Republic before the British recaptured her. She was sold in 1802.
HMS Alacrity was a Cruizer-class brig-sloop built by William Rowe at Newcastle and launched in 1806. She served in the Baltic and was at the capture of Copenhagen in 1807. She captured a large privateer before herself falling victim to a French man-of-war in 1811 in an action in which her captain failed to distinguish himself. She then served in the French navy until she was broken up in 1822.
HMS Wolverine, was a Royal Navy 14-gun brig-sloop, formerly the civilian collier Rattler that the Admiralty purchased in 1798 and converted into a brig sloop, but armed experimentally. She served during the French Revolutionary Wars and participated in one action that won for her crew a clasp to the Naval General Service Medal. A French privateer captured and sank Wolverine on 21 March 1804 whilst she was on convoy duty.
The British Royal Navy employed two vessels described as His Majesty's hired armed cutter Kent, the first during the French Revolutionary Wars, and the second during the Napoleonic Wars.
His Majesty's hired armed cutter Courier appears twice in the records of the British Royal Navy. The size and armament suggests that both contracts could represent the same vessel, but other information indicates that the second Courier had been captured from the French in the West Indies. On the first contract the captain and crew were awarded clasps to the Naval General Service Medal, one for a boat action and one for a single ship action in which they distinguished themselves.
HMS Peterel was a 16-gun Pylades-class ship-sloop of the Royal Navy. She was launched in 1794 and was in active service until 1811. Her most famous action was the capture of the French brig Ligurienne when shortly after Peterel captured two merchant ships and sent them off with prize crews, three French ships attacked her. She drove two on shore and captured the largest, the 14-gun Ligurienne. The Navy converted Peterel to a receiving ship at Plymouth in 1811 and sold her in 1827.
HMS Circe was a 28-gun Enterprise-class sixth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy. She was launched in 1785 but not completed or commissioned until 1790. She then served in the English Channel on the blockade of French ports before she was wrecked in 1803.
HMS Success was a 32-gun Amazon-class fifth-rate frigate of the British Royal Navy launched in 1781, which served during the American Revolutionary, French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. The French captured her in the Mediterranean on 13 February 1801, but she was recaptured by the British on 2 September. She continued to serve in the Mediterranean until 1811, and in North America until hulked in 1814, then serving as a prison ship and powder hulk, before being broken up in 1820.
HMS Swallow was a Cruizer-class brig-sloop launched in December 1805, nine months late. She served the Royal Navy through the Napoleonic Wars, capturing numerous privateers. After the end of the wars she was broken up in 1815.
Bordelais, launched in 1799, was a privateer corvette from Bordeaux, France. She took part in three campaigns before HMS Révolutionnaire captured her. She then served the Royal Navy until broken up in 1804.
Jalouse was an 18-gun Belliqueuse-class brig-corvette of the French Navy, built to a design by Pierre-Alexandre-Laurent Forfait, and launched in 1794 at Honfleur. The Royal Navy captured her in May 1797 and took her into service under her existing name. In British service she served primarily on the North Sea station where she captured three small French privateers, and many Dutch merchant vessels. She also participated with other British warships in two or three major cutting-out expeditions. She was broken up in 1807.
HMS Romulus was a 36-gun fifth rate frigate of the Flora class, built for the Royal Navy and launched in September 1785. At the outbreak of the French Revolutionary War, Romulus was despatched to the Mediterranean where she joined a fleet under Admiral Lord Hood, initially blockading, and later occupying, the port of Toulon. She played an active role during the withdrawal in December, providing covering fire while HMS Robust and HMS Leviathan removed allied troops from the waterfront.