Steam frigates and the smaller steam corvettes, steam sloops, steam gunboats and steam schooners, were steam-powered warships that were not meant to stand in the line of battle. The first such ships were paddle steamers. Later on the invention of screw propulsion enabled construction of screw-powered versions of the traditional frigates, corvettes, sloops and gunboats.
Six ships of the Royal Navy have been named HMS Wolverine, or the alternative spelling Wolverene, after the wolverine:
The Battle of Lissa took place on 20 July 1866 in the Adriatic Sea near the Dalmatian island of Vis and was a significant victory for an Austrian Empire force over a numerically superior Italian force. It was the first major sea battle between ironclads and one of the last to involve deliberate ramming. The Italian navy fired roughly 1450 shots during the engagement but failed to sink any Austrian ship and lost two ironclads.
HMS Barossa or HMS Barrosa, named for the Battle of Barossa (1811), has been the name of four ships of the British Royal Navy:
Ten ships of the Royal Navy have been named HMS Rattlesnake, including:
HMS Orpheus was a Jason-class Royal Navy corvette that served as the flagship of the Australian squadron. Orpheus sank off the west coast of Auckland, New Zealand on 7 February 1863: 189 crew out of the ship's complement of 259 died in the disaster, making it the worst maritime tragedy to occur in New Zealand waters.
Seven ships of the Royal Navy have been named HMS Orpheus. Orpheus was the magical father of songs in Greek mythology.
HMS Defence was the lead ship of the Defence-class armoured frigates ordered by the Royal Navy in 1859. Upon completion in 1862 she was assigned to the Channel Fleet. The ship was paid off in 1866 to be refitted and rearmed and was briefly reassigned to the Channel Fleet when she recommissioned in 1868. Defence had short tours on the North Atlantic and Mediterranean Stations, relieving other ironclads, from 1869 to 1872 before she was refitted again from 1872 to 1874. She became guard ship on the River Shannon when she recommissioned. The ship was transferred to the Channel Fleet again in 1876 and then became guard ship on the River Mersey until 1885. Defence was placed in reserve until 1890, when she was assigned to the mechanical training school in Devonport in 1890. She was renamed Indus when the school adopted that name and served there until sold for scrap in 1935.
HMS Eclipse was a four-gun Cormorant-class first-class gunvessel launched in 1860 from the shipyard of J. Scott Russell & Co., Millwall. She served on the Australia Station, took part in the Second Taranaki War, including contributing men to a naval brigade which attacked the Maori stronghold at Gate Pā. The entire class were never satisfactory as gunvessels, partly due to their excessive draught, and Eclipse was broken up at Sheerness in 1867, only seven years after her launch.
The Atholl-class corvettes were a series of fourteen Royal Navy sailing sixth-rate post ships built to an 1817 design by the Surveyors of the Navy. A further four ships ordered to this design were cancelled.
The RML 7-inch guns were various designs of medium-sized rifled muzzle-loading guns used to arm small to medium-sized British warships in the late 19th century, and some were used ashore for coast defence.
The Volage class was a group of two screw corvettes built for the Royal Navy in the late 1860s. Both ships spent the bulk of their active service abroad. Volage spent most of her first commission assigned to the Detached or Flying Squadron circumnavigating the world and then carried a party of astronomers to the Kerguelen Islands to observe the Transit of Venus in 1874. The ship was then assigned as the senior officer's ship in South American waters until she was transferred to the Training Squadron during the 1880s.
The Amethyst-class corvettes were a class of the last wooden warships to be built for the British Royal Navy; each was built at a Royal Dockyard. Three were ordered under the 1871–72 Programme and two under the 1872–73 Programme. Built in the early and middle 1870s, they mostly served overseas and were retired early as they were regarded as hopelessly obsolete by the late 1880s. She served alongside HMS Shah in the action against the Peruvian warship Huascar on 29th May 1877.
The Emerald-class corvettes were a class of six composite screw corvettes built for the Royal Navy in the mid-1870s. The Opal was built by contract under the 1873-74 Programme, and Turquoise, Ruby, Tourmaline and Emerald under the 1874-75 Programme - the first three also by contract, while Emerald was dockyard-built at Pembroke. The final ship (Garnet) was also dockyard-built at Chatham under the 1875-76 Programme.
Ten ships of the Royal Navy have borne the name HMS Dart, after the River Dart in Devon:
The Djambi class was a class of steam corvettes of the Royal Netherlands Navy. The class comprised Djambi, Zoutman, Willem, Leeuwarden, Metalen Kruis and Curaçao. Later two ships of a supposedly 'slightly revised' type were built, the Zilveren Kruis-class corvettes.
HMS Barrosa was a Jason-class corvette launched on 10 March 1860 at Woolwich Dockyard and scrapped in 1877. She was 225 ft long, 41 ft wide and of 1,700 tons builders measurement, and armed with 16 × 8n, 1 × 7in and 4 × 40pdr guns. She bombarded Shimonoseki in 1864, and was part of the Flying Squadron between 1869 and 1873.
The Cossack-class corvettes were two 20-gun first-class corvettes, initially under construction in Britain for the Imperial Russian Navy. These ships were seized on 5 April 1854, after the outbreak of the Crimean War.
Royal Navy