HMS Monkey (1826)

Last updated

HMS Monkey captures slaver Midas.jpg
HMS Monkey captures the Spanish slaver Midas, by William John Huggins, National Maritime Museum
History
Naval Ensign of the United Kingdom.svgUnited Kingdom
NameHMS Monkey
BuilderMcLean, Jamaica [1]
AcquiredJune 1826 [1]
FateWrecked, May 1831
General characteristics [1]
Type Schooner
Tons burthen70, [1] or 73, [2] or 75 [3] (bm)
Length53 ft 3 in (16.2 m) (overall); *40 ft 8+1⁄2 in (12.4 m) (keel)
Beam18 ft (5.5 m)
Depth of hold7 ft 3 in (2.2 m)
Complement26 [3]
Armament1 × long 12-pounder gun on a pivot [3]

HMS Monkey was a schooner of the British Royal Navy, launched in 1826 at Jamaica and assigned to the West Indies squadron. She made three notable captures of slaver ships, one involving a single-ship action against a slave ship much larger and more heavily armed than herself. She was wrecked in 1831 near Tampico. [4]

Contents

Origins

Vice Admiral Lawrence Halsted, Commander-in-Chief, West Indies, ordered HMS Magpie and Monkey built on the lines of HMS Assiduous. [5] There was a third vessel, Nimble, that the Navy found defective and refused to accept. [1]

Career

Lieutenant Edward Holland commissioned Monkey on 26 July 1826, for Jamaica. In July 1827, Lieutenant James Beckford Lewis Hay replaced Holland. Lieutenant Martin Cole was appointed to replace Hay on 20 September 1828, but in October Lieutenant Joseph Sherer assumed command. [1]

On 8 December, Monkey landed a detachment of the 2nd West India Regiment, under the command of Captain Thomas McPherson, on Exuma. The troops' arrival calmed unrest among slaves on a plantation there. [6]

On 14 March 1829, Monkey, under the command of Lieutenant Joseph Sherer, captured the American vessel Borneo. [lower-alpha 1]

On 7 April 1829, [8] Monkey captured the Spanish schooner Josefa, in among the Bahamas, near the Berry Islands or Rocks ( 25°50′30″N77°45′30″W / 25.84167°N 77.75833°W / 25.84167; -77.75833 ). Josepha was armed with one 12-pounder gun, had a crew of 21, and was carrying 206 captives; [9] 79 men, 36 women, 48 boys and 43 girls. After Josefa's capture one female child was born, and one woman died. [10] Head money for 206 captives was paid in February 1831. [lower-alpha 2]

On 27 June 1829, [8] she captured the Spanish slave ship Midas near Bimini at 25°55′N77°17′W / 25.917°N 77.283°W / 25.917; -77.283 . [12] The 360-ton Midas, alias Providencia, was under the command of Captain Ildefonso Martinez. Midas, which mounted four long 18-pounder and four medium 12-pounder guns and had a crew of more than 50, was taken in an action lasting 35 minutes. One or more of her crew and of the slaves on board were killed and others wounded in the battle. [13] [14] [15]

Nimble helped Monkey escort Midas to port. Midas had left Africa in April 1829, with 562 Africans, but only 369 were still alive when Midas was captured, and 72 more died of "smallpox, diarrhea & scurvy" before Monkey and Nimble could take Midas into Havana. [12] Lieutenant Sherer discovered that Midas's crew included two Americans (one severely wounded by grapeshot in the capture), and five British subjects, including one "a free Black of Jamaica". Scherer turned the Americans over to Grampus. [16] [lower-alpha 3] Head money for 400 captives was paid in February 1831. [17]

Sherer received promotion to the rank of Commander on 30 December 1829, for his successes. [3]

In 1830, Monkey was briefly under the command of Lieutenant Willoughby Shortland. She served as a tender to Blossom. Shortland transferred to the command of Skipjack in March 1831.

Loss

Monkey was under the command of Mate Thomas Downes when she wrecked on 13 May 1831, near Tampico, Mexico. A local steam boat was towing her across the bar at Tampico but only succeeded in running her aground. Supposedly she was beaten to a wreck and her remains sold at auction on 25 May. [2] Still, her crew were rescued.

The Royal Navy replaced her in October with a second Monkey.

Notes

  1. ↑ A first-class share of the prize money was worth £18 8s; a sixth-class share, that of an ordinary seaman, was worth 19s 6d. [7]
  2. ↑ A first-class share was worth £533 13s 9d a sixth class share, that of an ordinary seaman, was worth £9 19s 11¼d. [11]
  3. ↑ Three of the British seamen were found to have been saved from a Liverpool vessel wrecked on the African coast. They had been found under arms on Midas and were sentenced to death for piracy. Their sentence was commuted to transportation for life. [13]

Citations

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Winfield (2014), p. 273.
  2. 1 2 Hepper (1994), p. 161.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Marshall (1835), pp. 348–9.
  4. ↑ Davis, Peter. "HMS Monkey". Mid-Victorian RN vessels. Retrieved 19 November 2011.
  5. ↑ Grindal (2016), 9170.
  6. ↑ Tinker (2013), p. 160.
  7. ↑ "No. 19089". The London Gazette . 1 October 1833. p. 1771.
  8. 1 2 "No. 18764". The London Gazette . 4 January 1831. p. 8.
  9. ↑ Clowes (1897), p. 268.
  10. ↑ Correspondence with the British Commissioners at Sierra Leone, The Havana, Rio de Janeiro and Surinam, relating to the Slave Trade. London: R. G. Clarke. 1829. Retrieved 2 January 2012.
  11. 1 2 "No. 18776". The London Gazette . 15 February 1831. pp. 295–296.
  12. 1 2 Swanson (2005), pp. 10–11 & 130–131.
  13. 1 2 Marshall (1835), pp. 348–349.
  14. ↑ "Havana Slave Trade Commission - Midas". The Liberated Africans Project. Archived from the original on 19 October 2017. Retrieved 12 July 2019.
  15. ↑ "Monthly Naval Register". The United Service Journal and Naval and Military Magazine. 1870 (3): 517. 1829. Retrieved 19 November 2011.
  16. ↑ State Papers, relating to Slaves in the Colonies; Slave Trade (1830), Vol. 33, pp.154-5.
  17. ↑ A first-class share was worth £1118 17s 1d; a sixth class share, that of an ordinary seaman, was worth £76 5s 8¼d. [11]

Related Research Articles

HMS Leda, launched in 1800, was the lead ship of a successful class of forty-seven British Royal Navy 38-gun sailing frigates. Leda's design was based on the French Hébé, which the British had captured in 1782. Leda was wrecked at the mouth of Milford Haven in 1808, Captain Honeyman was exonerated of all blame, as it was a pilot error.

HMS <i>Apollo</i> (1799) Frigate of the Royal Navy

HMS Apollo, the fourth ship of the Royal Navy to be named for the Greek god Apollo, was a fifth-rate frigate of a nominal 36 guns. She was the name ship of the Apollo-class frigates. Apollo was launched in 1799, and wrecked with heavy loss of life in 1804.

HMS <i>Cherub</i> (1806) Sloop of the Royal Navy

HMS Cherub was an 18-gun Royal Navy Cormorant-class sloop built in Dover in 1806. She participated in two major campaigns in the West Indies during the Napoleonic Wars, and one major engagement in the Pacific during the War of 1812, all each of which earned her crews clasps to the Naval General Service Medal. The Navy sold her in 1820.

HMS <i>Black Joke</i> (1827) UK naval anti-slavery brig 1827–1832

The third HMS Black Joke was probably built in Baltimore in 1824, becoming the Brazilian slave ship Henriquetta. The Royal Navy captured her in September 1827, and purchased her into the service. The Navy renamed her Black Joke, after an English song of the same name, and assigned her to the West Africa Squadron. Her role was to chase down slave ships, and over her five-year career, she freed thousands of slaves. The Navy deliberately burnt her in May 1832 because her timbers had rotted to the point that she was no longer fit for active service.

HMS <i>Melampus</i> (1785) Frigate of the Royal Navy

HMS Melampus was a Royal Navy fifth-rate frigate that served during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. She captured numerous prizes before the British sold her to the Royal Netherlands Navy in 1815. With the Dutch, she participated in a major action at Algiers and, then, in a number of colonial punitive expeditions in the Dutch East Indies.

HMS <i>Dido</i> (1784) Enterprise-class Royal Navy frigate

HMS Dido was one of the twenty-seven Enterprise class of 28-gun sixth-rate frigates in service with the Royal Navy during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Dido was commissioned in September 1787 under the command of Captain Charles Sandys. She participated in a notable action for which her crew would later be awarded the Naval General Service Medal; her participation in a campaign resulted in the award of another. Dido was sold for breaking up in 1817.

HMS Brazen was a 28-gun Royal Navy Bittern-class ship sloop, launched in 1808.

HMS <i>Grasshopper</i> (1813) Brig-sloop of the Royal Navy

HMS Grasshopper was a Royal Navy 18-gun Cruizer-class brig-sloop built at Portsmouth Dockyard by Nicholas Diddams and launched in 1813. She was the second ship of the class to bear the name; the first Grasshopper had been stranded at Texel and surrendered to the Batavian Republic on Christmas Day 1811. The present Grasshopper remained in service until sold in 1832. She then became a whaler in the Southern Whale Fisheries, making four voyages between 1832 and 1847.

HMS Nimble was a Royal Navy 5-gun schooner-of-war. She was employed in anti-slave trade patrol from 1826 until 1834, when she was wrecked on a reef with the loss of 70 Africans who had been rescued from a slave ship.

HMS Comus was a 22-gun Laurel-class sixth-rate post ship of the Royal Navy. She was launched in 1806. In 1807 she took part in one notable single-ship action and was at the capture of Copenhagen. In 1815 she spent six months with the West Africa Squadron suppressing the slave trade during which time she captured ten slavers and freed 500-1,000 slaves. She was wrecked in 1816 with no loss of life.

HMS <i>Scylla</i> (1809) Brig-sloop of the Royal Navy

HMS Scylla was an 18-gun Cruizer-class brig-sloop of the Royal Navy. The first to bear the name Scylla, she was launched in 1809 and broken up in 1846.

HMS <i>Carron</i> (1813)

HMS Carron was a 20-gun Cyrus-class sixth-rate post ship of the Royal Navy built in 1813 by Edward Adams, at Bucklers Hard in Hampshire. She was wrecked in 1820.

HMS Speedwell was the mercantile Royal George, which the Royal Navy purchased in 1815 and converted to a 5-gun schooner. During her career in the West Indies, she helped capture or destroy a number of pirate vessels, and capture several slave ships transporting enslaved people. The Royal Navy sold her at Jamaica in 1834.

HMS Diana was variously described as a brig or cutter. Her origins are currently obscure, but the British Royal Navy acquired her at Bombay in 1807. In her short career she captured three armed vessels, one in a notable single-ship action. She was condemned in 1810.

HMS Union was the mercantile City of Kingston that the Royal Navy purchased in 1823 for service as a 3-gun schooner. She served in the suppression of the slave trade in the West Indies. She was wrecked in 1828.

HMS Barbadoes was a 16-gun vessel, the American Herald, captured in 1813. The Royal Navy took her into service as HMS Barbadoes She captured a number of merchantmen and privateers before she was paid-off in May 1816. In 1814–1815 she also captured three Spanish and French slave ships carrying over 1100 enslaved people. Barbadoes became a powder ship in Jamaica that was later wrecked with her remains being sold.

HMS Tyne was launched at Topsham in 1814 as a Conway-class sixth rate. She served in the East Indies and in the Pacific Squadron. She also served in the Caribbean, cruising against pirates, during which she captured the pirate schooner Zaragozana. In 1825 the Navy sold Tyne and she became the whaler William. She was lost in early 1827 in the Bonin Islands on her first voyage to the British southern whale fishery.

HMS Renegade was a schooner built in the United States in 1820, or possibly even earlier. She had been the pirate ship Zaragozana operating out of Havana that the British Royal Navy captured on 31 March 1823, and took into service. The Navy sold HMS Renegade in January 1826.

HMS <i>Magpie</i> (1826) Schooner of the Royal Navy

HMS Magpie was a 4-gun Magpie-class schooner of the Royal Navy. She was launched at Jamaica in June 1826 as the lead ship of the class. Her design was based on that of HMS Assiduous. While searching for pirates off the coast of Cuba on 27 August Magpie capsized in a squall. Only nine men from her crew of thirty-five survived the initial wreck. Clinging to one of the ship's boats, three men were killed by shark attacks, and a further four died from the heat and lack of water before the boat was discovered on 29 August, rescuing the final two survivors.

References

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.