HMS Queen Charlotte (1810)

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History
Naval ensign of the United Kingdom.svg United Kingdom
NameHMS Queen Charlotte
Namesake Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz
Ordered9 July 1801
BuilderDeptford Dockyard
Laid downOctober 1805
Launched17 July 1810 [1]
CommissionedJanuary 1813
FateSold, 12 January 1892
General characteristics [2]
Class & type104-gun first-rate ship of the line
Tons burthen2289 bm
Length190 ft 0+1⁄2 in (57.9 m) (gundeck)
Beam52 ft 5+3⁄4 in (16.0 m)
Depth of hold22 ft 4 in (6.8 m)
PropulsionSails
Sail plan Full-rigged ship
Armament
  • Gundeck: 30 × 32-pounder guns
  • Middle gundeck: 30 × 24-pounder guns
  • Upper gundeck: 30 × 12-pounder guns
  • QD: 2 × 12-pounder guns + 12 × 32-pounder carronades
  • Fc: 2 × 12-pounder guns + 2 × 32-pounder carronades
  • Poop deck: 6 × 18-pounder carronades

HMS Queen Charlotte was a 104-gun first-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, launched on 17 July 1810 at Deptford. She replaced the first Queen Charlotte sunk in 1800.

Contents

William Brown

In 1815, a Black sailor from Grenada named William Brown. Brown was discharged from Queen Charlotte 'for being a woman' [3] as recorded on the ship's muster register. Brown's real name remains unknown, though she allegedly joined the crew of Queen Charlotte following a quarrel with her husband. The Annual Register, published the same year as her discharge, described her as being around 26 years of age and that she was rated able on the books. [4] Historians debate the length of her naval service, with many arguing she served no more than eleven days before her identity was discovered, whilst some sources at the time state she served for upwards of eleven years, including as captain of the fore-top. [5] Brown is largely believed to have been the first Black woman to serve in the Royal Navy.

Career

Queen Charlotte spent a short amount of time as part of the West Africa Squadron in 1816, formed in 1808 in response to An Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade in Britain that was passed in 1807. The role of the Squadron was to patrol the West Africa coastline, intercepting slaving vessels. Most notably, Queen Charlotte gained notoriety when she captured the Le Louis – a French slaving vessel – on 11th March 1816. Le Louis was taken off Cape Mesurado having set sail from Martinique in January 1816. [6] Following engagement, the ship was taken to Freetown, Sierra Leone, where the Admiralty courts legally confirmed the free status of those on board who had been enslaved. They were then consigned by the colonial government to a variety of unfree labour apprenticeships as part of their transition to becoming 'free subjects'.

HMS Queen Charlotte’s seizure of Le Louis , however, caused a legal controversy that tested and defeated Britain’s right to search suspected and actual slaving vessels by challenging the Vienna Declaration of 1815.

Sir William Scott, Judge of the High Court of Admiralty, ruled that the right to visit and search royal warships did not exist in peacetime, except in the case of piracy, but because the transatlantic slave trade was not piracy under the Law of Nations, nor had the French declared the transatlantic slave trade to be piracy, the Royal Navy had no right to intercept Le Louis . Scott added:  

“A nation is not justified in assuming rights that do not belong to her merely because she means to apply them to a laudable purpose; nor in setting out upon a moral crusade of converting other nations by unlawful force...” [7]

He ended by stating that no government could “force the way to liberation of Africa by trampling on the independence of other states of Europe.”  

Later that year, Queen Charlotte was Lord Exmouth's flagship during the Bombardment of Algiers in 1816.

On 17 September 1817, Linnet, a tender to Queen Charlotte, seized a smuggled cargo of tobacco. The officers and crew of Queen Charlotte shared in the prize money. [Note 1]

On 17 December 1823, Queen Charlotte was driven into the British ship Brothers at Portsmouth, Hampshire, England. [9] Brothers suffered severe damage in the collision. [9]

Figurehead

When HMS Queen Charlotte was sold for breaking up, the figurehead was removed and mounted high up on the gabled end of an accommodation block near the entrance to the gunnery training base on Whale Island. When those buildings were demolished in 2004, the figurehead was removed and placed upon a plinth at the entrance to HMS Excellent (shore establishment). [10]

The figurehead is now in the collection of the National Museum of the Royal Navy.

Notes

  1. ↑ A first-class share was worth £101 18s 8d; a sixth-class share, that of an ordinary seaman, was worth 8s 2¼d. [8]

Citations

  1. ↑ The Times (London), Wednesday, 18 July 1810, p.3
  2. ↑ Lavery, Ships of the Line Vol. 1, p. 187.
  3. ↑ Frhists, Dr Jo Stanley (10 April 2017). "Gender and the sea: Black woman cross-dressed seafarer 'William Brown' - exhibition". Gender and the sea. Retrieved 11 June 2025.
  4. ↑ TNA ADM ADM 37/5039, Annual Register, September 1815
  5. ↑ Cordingly, David (2001). Seafaring Women: Adventures of Pirate Queens, Female Stowaways and Sailors' Wives (1st ed.). London: Random House Trade.
  6. ↑ Bryant, Jonathan M. (2015). Dark Places of the Earth: The Voyage of the Slave Ship Antelope. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
  7. ↑ Report of the Directors of the African Institution Read at the Annual General Meeting: On the . London: African Institution. 1818. Retrieved 23 July 2016.
  8. ↑ "No. 17360". The London Gazette . 16 May 1818. p. 892.
  9. 1 2 "The Marine List". Lloyd's List (5865): 78 v. 19 December 1823.
  10. ↑ Pulvertaft, David (2009). The Warship Figureheads of Portsmouth (1st Colour ed.). UK: The History Press. p. 106. ISBN   978-0752450766.

References

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