Hired armed brig Pitt

Last updated

His Majesty's hired armed brig Pitt served the British Royal Navy between 1809 and 1812, primarily on the Brazil station. [1] There are no readily available records describing the brig, or her service. She may have been the merchantman Pitt. Admiralty records in the form of logbooks for the hired armed brig do exist so original research would provide more information. [2]

Pitt's service predates 1809. On 14 March 1808 Agamemnon, Foudroyant, and Pitt, of twelve 6-pounder guns and under the command of Lieutenant William Perkins, left Tangiers for Brazil. They reached Funchal Bay on 27 March. There they patrolled the vicinity for three days, looking for enemy vessels, and then sailed for the Cape Verde Islands. For a day or so Agamemnon towed Pitt, which was quite slow. They reached Praia, and then sailed across the Atlantic, reaching Guanabara Bay on 14 May. [3]

Mutine, Mistletoe, Nancy, and Pitt were anchored in the harbour of Buenos Aires on 25 May 1810 during May Week, when the revolution broke out in the city. Captain Fabian of Mutine broke out bunting and the British vessels saluted the revolution with salvos of cannon. Fabian also gave a rousing speech on liberty and revolution, praising the revolutionaries for having gained their freedom. One source gives the name of Pitt's commander as Lieutenant Thomas P. Perkins, but a newspaper account for March 1811 gives it as Lieutenant W. Perkins. On 28 May Pitt sailed to Rio de Janeiro with the news of the uprising. Mutine sailed for Britain with the same news on 3 June.

Citations and references

Citations

  1. "NMM, vessel ID 373436" (PDF). Warship Histories, vol iii. National Maritime Museum. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2 August 2011. Retrieved 30 July 2011.
  2. Admiralty: ADM 51/4078 HM Armed Brig Pitt.
  3. Deane (1996), pp. 225-30.

References

This article includes data released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported UK: England & Wales Licence, by the National Maritime Museum, as part of the Warship Histories project.

Related Research Articles

HMS <i>Agamemnon</i> (1781) 1781 ship

HMS Agamemnon was a 64-gun third-rate ship of the line of the British Royal Navy. She saw service in the American Revolutionary War, French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, and fought in many of the major naval battles of those conflicts. She is remembered as being Nelson's favourite ship, and was named after the mythical ancient Greek king Agamemnon, being the first ship of the Royal Navy to bear the name.

HMS <i>Fantome</i> (1810)

HMS Fantome was an 18-gun brig-sloop of the Royal Navy. She was originally a French privateer brig named Fantôme, which the British captured in 1810 and commissioned into British service. Fantome saw extensive action in the War of 1812 until she was lost in a shipwreck at Prospect, Nova Scotia, near Halifax in 1814.

Mutine was an 18-gun Belliqueuse-class gun-brig of the French Navy, built to a design by Pierre-Alexandre-Laurent Forfait, and launched in 1794 at Honfleur. She took part in the Battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, where the British captured her. She was recommissioned in the Royal Navy as HMS Mutine, and eventually sold in 1803.

HMS <i>Mutine</i> (1806)

HMS Mutine was a Royal Navy 18-gun Cruizer class brig-sloop, built by Henry Tucker at Bideford and launched in 1806. During her career she was under fire in Danish waters, in the Bay of Biscay, and at Algiers. She also visited North America, South America, and the West Coast of Africa. She was sold in 1819.

HMS Foxhound was an 18-gun Cruizer-class brig-sloop built by King at Dover and launched in 1806. She participated in the battle of the Basque Roads in early 1809 and foundered later that year.

During the period of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, there were two or three vessels known as His Majesty's hired armed cutter Active that served the British Royal Navy. The reason for the uncertainty in the number is that the size of the vessels raises the possibility that the first and second may have been the same vessel.

There were two, and possibly three, vessels named His Majesty's hired armed brig Ann that served the British Royal Navy. The first participated in an engagement in 1807 that would earn her crew the Naval General Service Medal. She is sometimes referred to in sources as the hired armed cutter Ann or the hired armed brig Anne. Little or nothing is known of the second and third hired armed brigs Ann or Anne.

Hired armed cutter <i>Telemachus</i>

His Majesty's hired armed cutter Telemachus served the Royal Navy from 17 June 1795 until 15 January 1801. She was of 128595 tons (bm), and carried fourteen 4-pounder guns. During her five and a half years of service to the Royal Navy she captured eight French privateers as well as many merchant vessels.

HMS Dominica was the French privateer schooner J(T?)opo L'Oeil that the British captured in 1807 in the Leeward Islands. She took part in one inconclusive single-ship action before she foundered in 1809.

The French lugger Affronteur was launched in 1795 and in 1796-7 participated in the Expédition d'Irlande. In 1803, HMS Doris captured her and she subsequently served the Royal Navy either as a commissioned vessel or, more probably, as His Majesty's hired armed brig Caroline. In 1807 she was either broken up, or became a letter of marque.

His Majesty's hired armed cutter Admiral Mitchell served under two contracts for the British Royal Navy, one at the end of the French Revolutionary Wars and the second at the beginning of the Napoleonic Wars. She participated in several notable small engagements and actions. In 1806 the Admiralty purchased her and took her into service as the Sir Andrew Mitchell in 1807.

HMS Patriot was a Dutch schuyt that the Royal Navy captured in 1808 and took into service. She captured several enemy vessels before she was converted to a water vessel in 1813. The Admiralty sold her in 1815.

Mutin was a 14-gun cutter of the French Navy, the lead ship of the Mutin class of five naval cutters. She was launched in 1778 and the Royal Navy captured her the next year, taking her into service as HMS Mutine. The Royal Navy renamed her HMS Pigmy in 1798. She was lost in 1805.

The Royal Navy employed two vessels designated as His Majesty's Hired armed vessel Sir Thomas Pasley during the French Revolutionary Wars. The two vessels were named for Admiral Sir Thomas Pasley. The vessels are also sometimes described as cutters, but more generally as brigs. The Spanish captured the first Sir Thomas Pasley. The second had a brief, but highly productive, career that later led to her crew qualifying for the Naval General Service Medal. After she was returned to her owners in March 1802, she may have been wrecked in the Mediterranean that same year.

His Majesty's hired armed ship Charles served the Royal Navy from 17 May 1804 to 13 May 1814. She had a burthen of 309294 tons (bm), and an armament of fourteen 18-pounder carronades. Prize money notices and other accounts referred to her interchangeably as the "hired armed brig", "hired armed ship", and "hired sloop".

Two vessels named His Majesty's Hired armed cutter Adrian served the British Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars as hired armed vessels.

HMS Cockatrice was the fourth of the Alert-class British Royal Navy cutters. She was launched in 1781 and had an uneventful career until the Navy sold her in 1802. Private interests purchased her, lengthened her, and changed her rig to that of a brig. They hired her out to the Navy and she was in service as a hired armed brig from 1806 to 1808. She then returned to mercantile service until she was condemned at Lisbon in May 1816 as not worth repairing.

HMS Ferret was a brig-sloop of the Royal Navy, launched in 1784 but not completed until 1787. In 1801 the Navy sold her. She then became a whaler, making six whaling voyages to the Pacific between 1802 and 1815. She was broken up in 1817.

HMS Nancy was the two-masted mercantile brig Nancy that Rear-Admiral Sidney Smith purchased for the Royal Navy at Buenos Aires and commissioned in 1808. Nancy served on the South America station until she was sold in 1813.

HMS Mistletoe was launched in Bermuda in 1809 and foundered in 1816.