Three ships and a naval base of the Royal Navy have been named HMS Nelson in honour of Horatio Nelson:
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 Warrior is a 40-gun steam-powered armoured frigate built for the Royal Navy in 1859–1861. She was the name ship of the Warrior-class ironclads. Warrior and her sister ship HMS Black Prince were the first armour-plated, iron-hulled warships, and were built in response to France's launching in 1859 of the first ocean-going ironclad warship, the wooden-hulled Gloire. Warrior conducted a publicity tour of Great Britain in 1863 and spent her active career with the Channel Squadron. Obsolescent following the 1873 commissioning of the mastless and more capable HMS Devastation, she was placed in reserve in 1875, and was "paid off" – decommissioned – in 1883.
A hulk is a ship that is afloat, but incapable of going to sea. Hulk may be used to describe a ship that has been launched but not completed, an abandoned wreck or shell, or to refer to a ship whose propulsion system is no longer maintained or has been removed altogether. The word hulk also may be used as a verb: a ship is "hulked" to convert it to a hulk. The verb was also applied to crews of Royal Navy ships in dock, who were sent to the receiving ship for accommodation, or "hulked". Hulks have a variety of uses such as housing, prisons, salvage pontoons, gambling sites, naval training, or cargo storage.
HMS Agincourt was a Minotaur-class armoured frigate built for the Royal Navy during the 1860s. She spent most of her career as the flagship of the Channel Squadron's second-in-command. During the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878, she was one of the ironclads sent to Constantinople to forestall a Russian occupation of the Ottoman capital. Agincourt participated in Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee Fleet Review in 1887. The ship was placed in reserve two years later and served as a training ship from 1893 to 1909. That year she was converted into a coal hulk and renamed as C.109. Agincourt served at Sheerness until sold for scrap in 1960.
The first HMS Shah was a nineteenth-century unarmoured iron hulled, wooden sheathed frigate of Britain's Royal Navy designed by Sir Edward Reed. She was originally to be named HMS Blonde but was renamed following the visit of the Shah of Persia in 1873.
HMS Minotaur was the lead ship of the Minotaur-class armoured frigates built for the Royal Navy during the 1860s. Minotaur took nearly four years between her launching and commissioning because she was used for evaluations of her armament and different sailing rigs.
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.
Polly Woodside is a Belfast-built, three-masted, iron-hulled barque, preserved in Melbourne, Victoria (Australia), and forming the central feature of the South Wharf precinct. The ship was originally built in Belfast by William J. Woodside and was launched in 1885. Polly Woodside is typical of thousands of smaller iron barques built in the last days of sail, intended for deep water trade around the world and designed to be operated as economically as possible.
Edwin Fox is one of the world's oldest surviving merchant sailing ships. The Edwin Fox is also the only surviving ship that transported convicts to Australia. She is unique in that she is the "only intact hull of a wooden deep water sailing ship built to British specifications surviving in the world outside the Falkland Islands". Edwin Fox carried settlers to both Australia and New Zealand and carried troops in the Crimean War. The ship is dry-docked at The Edwin Fox Maritime Centre at Picton in New Zealand.
HMS Lord Warden was the second and last ship of the wooden-hulled Lord Clyde class of armoured frigates built for the Royal Navy (RN) during the 1860s. She and her sister ship, Lord Clyde, were the heaviest wooden ships ever built and were also the fastest steaming wooden ships. They were also the slowest-sailing ironclads in the RN.
HMS Caledonia was a 120-gun first-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, launched on 25 June 1808 at Plymouth. She was Admiral Pellew's flagship in the Mediterranean.
HMS Malabar was a 74-gun third-rate Repulse-class ship of the line of the Royal Navy, built by the Parsi shipbuilder Jamsetjee Bomanjee Wadia and launched on 29 December 1818 on the Upper Duncan Dock at Bombay Dockyard.
President was a 38-gun fourth rate frigate of the Royal Navy, originally built for the navy of the Commonwealth of England by Peter Pett I at Deptford Dockyard, and launched in 1650.
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 Victory is a 104-gun first-rate wooden sailing ship of the line. With 247 years of service as of 2025, she is the world's oldest naval vessel still in commission. She was ordered for the Royal Navy in 1758, during the Seven Years' War and laid down in 1759. That year saw British victories at Quebec, Minden, Lagos and Quiberon Bay and these may have influenced the choice of name when it was selected in October the following year. In particular, the action in Quiberon Bay had a profound effect on the course of the war; severely weakening the French Navy and shifting its focus away from the sea. There was therefore no urgency to complete the ship and the signing of the Treaty of Paris in February 1763, meant that when Victory was finally floated out in 1765, she was placed in ordinary. Her construction had taken 6,000 trees, 90% of them oak.
HMS Pelican was an Osprey-class sloop built for the Royal Navy in the mid-1870s. She was launched in 1877 and was sold to the Hudson's Bay Company in 1901. She was scuttled in 1953.
Shag Bay is an inlet on the River Derwent near Geilston Bay, Tasmania, and is within the East Risdon State Reserve. The area around Shag Bay contains a number of Aboriginal Tasmanian shell middens. A bone meal fertiliser factory was established in Shag Bay in the early 1900s. In January 1915, its boiler exploded, resulting in two deaths of two people associated with the factory. The brigantine built in 1814 HMS Nelson was towed to Shag Bay in 1920 to be broken up after it finished its use as a coal hulk.
United Kingdom
