HMS Little Belt

Last updated December 26, 2021

Two ships of the Royal Navy have borne the name HMS Little Belt. The name was a translation from the original name of the first ship, a captured Danish prize. The Danish name is that of the strait that separates Funen from the Danish mainland and that links the Kattegat to the Baltic Sea.

HMS Little Belt (1807) was a 20-gun sixth rate, formerly the Danish ship Lillebælt. She was captured at the Battle of Copenhagen in 1807. She was involved in a battle with the American USS President in 1811, and was sold later that year.
HMS Little Belt (1812) was a 3-gun sloop, formerly the mercantile sloop Friends Good Will , which the British captured in July 1812 and the Americans captured in 1813, but which grounded in October 1813 and was burnt by a British expeditionary force in December.

This article includes a list of ships with the same or similar names. If an internal link for a specific ship led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended ship article, if one exists.

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The Gunboat War was a naval conflict between Denmark–Norway and the British during the Napoleonic Wars. The war's name is derived from the Danish tactic of employing small gunboats against the materially superior Royal Navy. In Scandinavia it is seen as the later stage of the English Wars, whose commencement is accounted as the First Battle of Copenhagen in 1801.

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The Little Belt affair was a naval battle on the night of 16 May 1811. It involved the United States frigate USS President and the British sixth-rate HMS Little Belt, a sloop-of-war, which had originally been the Danish ship Lillebælt, before being captured by the British in the 1807 Battle of Copenhagen. The encounter took place off the North Carolina coast. The Little Belt Affair was one of many incidents and events that led to the War of 1812.

Eight ships of the Royal Navy have been named HMS Iris after the Greek mythological figure Iris or after the flower by that name. A ninth was planned but renamed before entering service:

HMS Little Belt was the mercantile sloop Friends Good Will, launched in 1811, which the British captured shortly after the start of the War of 1812. The British took her into service as Little Belt, armed her with three guns, and incorporated her into the Royal Navy's Lake Erie fleet. The American schooner Scorpion captured her during the Battle of Lake Erie and the Americans took her into service under her existing name. A storm drove her ashore in October 1813 and a British expeditionary force burnt her in December 1813.

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Lillebælt was a Danish 22-gun warship launched in 1801. The Danes surrendered her to the Royal Navy in 1807 and she became the 20-gun post ship HMS Little Belt. In a single-ship action in 1811 while the United States of America was at peace with Great Britain, USS President fired on Little Belt, ostensibly believing her to be HMS Guerriere, which had recently impressed a sailor from USS Spitfire. History is not sure who fired first, both sides claiming the other had fired initially. This action was the eponymous "Little Belt affair". British captain Arthur Batt Bingham maintained that the Americans fired first and that although his vessel had suffered heavy casualties he had not at any time surrendered. Little Belt was broken up in 1819.

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Ten ships of the Royal Navy have borne the name HMS Laurel. Another was planned but never completed. The first British ship of the name served in the Commonwealth navy. All were named after the plant family Lauraceae.

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At least six vessels, including two belonging to the British Royal Navy, have borne the name Little Belt, a translation from the Danish of Lillebælt, the name of the strait that separates Funen from the Danish mainland and that links the Kattegat to the Baltic Sea. The merchant vessels and the second Royal Navy vessel were named to commemorate HMS Little Belt, which was one of the protagonists in the Little Belt affair, or perhaps the affair itself.

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