HMS Endeavour was a British Royal Navy research vessel that Lieutenant James Cook commanded to Tahiti, New Zealand and Australia on his first voyage of discovery from 1768 to 1771.
HMS Iron Duke was the last of four Audacious-class central battery ironclads built for the Royal Navy in the late 1860s. Completed in 1871, the ship was briefly assigned to the Reserve Fleet as a guardship in Ireland, before she was sent out to the China Station as its flagship. Iron Duke returned four years later and resumed her duties as a guardship. She accidentally rammed and sank her sister ship, Vanguard, in a heavy fog in mid-1875 and returned to the Far East in 1878. The ship ran aground twice during this deployment and returned home in 1883. After a lengthy refit, Iron Duke was assigned to the Channel Fleet in 1885 and remained there until she again became a guardship in 1890. The ship was converted into a coal hulk a decade later and continued in that role until 1906 when she was sold for scrap and broken up.
Scarborough was a double-decked, three-masted, ship-rigged, copper-sheathed, barque that participated in the First Fleet, assigned to transport convicts for the European colonisation of Australia in 1788. Also, the British East India company (EIC) chartered Scarborough to take a cargo of tea back to Britain after her two voyages transporting convicts. She spent much of her career as a West Indiaman, trading between London and the West Indies, but did perform a third voyage in 1801–02 to Bengal for the EIC. In January 1805 she repelled a French privateer of superior force in a single-ship action, before foundering in April.
HMS Apollo, the third ship of the Royal Navy to be named for the Greek god Apollo, was a 38-gun Artois-class fifth rate frigate of the Royal Navy. She served during the French Revolutionary Wars, but her career ended after just four years in service when she was wrecked on the Haak sands off the Dutch coast.
The Croisière du Grand Hiver was a French attempt to organise a winter naval campaign in the wake of the Glorious First of June.
HMS Hindostan was a 56-gun fourth-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy. She was originally the East Indiaman Hindostan, launched in 1789, that the Admiralty bought in 1795. She is known for two events, her voyage to China between 1792 and 1794 when she carried Lord Macartney on a special embassy to China, and her loss in a fire at sea in 1804.
HMS Buckingham was a 70-gun third-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, built at Deptford Dockyard by John Holland to the draught specified by the 1745 Establishment, and in active service during the Seven Years' War with France. With a crew of 520 she was one of the largest ships in the Navy at that time.
HMS Investigator was the mercantile Fram, launched in 1795, which the Royal Navy purchased in 1798 and renamed HMS Xenophon, and then in 1801 converted to a survey ship under the name HMS Investigator. In 1802, under the command of Matthew Flinders, she was the first ship to circumnavigate Australia. The Navy sold her in 1810 and she returned to mercantile service under the name Xenophon. She was probably broken up c.1872.
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.
Captain Henry Inman was a British Royal Navy officer during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, serving in the American Revolutionary War, the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars. Inman's service in the American war was punctuated by three shipwrecks: the burning of HMS Lark off Rhode Island in the face of a superior French squadron, the grounding of HMS Santa Monica on Tortola and the foundering of Hector following an engagement with two French ships in the Mid-Atlantic. After the war he was placed in reserve until the Spanish Armament of 1790, when he was given command of the 14-gun cutter HMS Pygmy stationed off the Isle of Man.
HMS Prince was a Royal Navy storeship purchased in 1854 from mercantile owners and lost in a storm off Balaklava in November that year during the Crimean War.
HMS Arab was a 22-gun post ship of the Royal Navy. She was formerly the 18-gun French privateer Brave, which the British captured in 1798. She served during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars until she was sold in 1810.
HMS Blanche was a 1760-ton, 6-gun Eclipse-class wooden screw sloop built for the Royal Navy in the mid-1860s by Chatham Dockyard.
HMS Mediator was a Roebuck-class 44-gun fifth rate of the Royal Navy. She was built and served during the American War of Independence, but was reduced to a storeship and renamed HMS Camel in 1788. She spent the French Revolutionary and part of the Napoleonic Wars in this capacity before being broken up in 1810.
HMS Jupiter was a 50-gun Portland-class fourth-rate ship of the Royal Navy. She served during the American War of Independence, the French Revolutionary Wars, and the Napoleonic Wars in a career that spanned thirty years. She was also one of the fastest ships in the Royal Navy as shown by her attempt to capture the cutter Eclipse under Nathaniel Fanning.
A ship's boat is a utility boat carried by a larger vessel. Ship's boats have always provided transport between the shore and other ships. Other work done by such boats has varied over time, as technology has changed. In the age of sail, especially for warships, an important role was the collection of drinking water. The use of radio, followed by telex, e-mail, etc. has reduced and then replaced the need for written communications to be delivered. A large enough boat may be needed to carry an anchor to some distance away from the ship, so as to kedge out of a harbour or away from a hazard – and also to recover such an anchor afterwards. Warships have always used their boats as an extension to their military role. This includes the provision of a means of escape for the crews of fireships, the landing of troops, or the "cutting out" raids that were used by the Royal Navy, especially during the Napoleonic Wars. All these requirements competed with the need to be able to stow the boats on board in a way that did not interfere with the normal operation of the ship.
HMS Sartine was a French merchant vessel from Bordeaux. The French Navy pressed her into service on 3 August 1778 to assist in the defense of Pondichéry. The British captured her during the Siege of Pondicherry (1778), and took her into service under her existing name. HMS Sartine foundered in action off Calicut in November 1780.
Créole was a 40-gun frigate of the French Navy, a one-off design by Jacques-Augustin Lamothe. The French Navy loaned her to a privateer in 1797. Later, she served in the Brest squadron, took part in Ganteaume's expeditions of 1801 to Egypt, and was involved in the French acquisition of Santo Domingo and briefly detained Toussaint Louverture before he was brought to France. The 74-gun ships HMS Vanguard and HMS Cumberland captured her Santo Domingo on 30 June 1803. The Royal Navy took her into service but she foundered soon afterwards during an attempt to sail to Britain; her crew were rescued.
Sir Edward Hughes was launched in 1784 as an East Indiaman for the British East India Company (EIC). She spent four years as a country ship, i.e., sailing in the East Indies but without going to Britain. Then between 1788 and 1803 she made eight voyages to India and China for the EIC. In 1804 the EIC sold Sir Edward Hughes to the British Royal Navy, which commissioned her as a 38-gun frigate. The Navy renamed her Tortoise in 1807 and converted her to a storeship in 1808. After the end of the Napoleonic Wars she became variously a coal depot, a hulk, and then a convict transport. In 1844 she became a receiving ship at Ascension Island. She was lost there in 1859, or broken up there in 1860, or 1863.
Brunswick was launched in 1792 as an East Indiaman for the British East India Company (EIC). She made five complete voyages for the EIC before the French captured her in 1805. Shortly thereafter she wrecked at the Cape of Good Hope.
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