HMS Trincomalee

HMS Trincomalee is a Royal Navy Leda-class sailing frigate built shortly after the end of the Napoleonic Wars. She is now restored as a museum ship in Hartlepool, England.

For other ships with the same name, see List of ships named HMS Trincomalee.

Trincomalee in her current location in Hartlepool
History
 United Kingdom
Name: HMS Trincomalee
Operator: National Museum of the Royal Navy
Ordered: 30 October 1812
Builder: Wadia Group
Cost: £23,000
Laid down: 25 April 1816
Launched: 12 October 1817
Out of service: 1986
Renamed:
  • Foudroyant: 1903
  • Trincomalee: 1992
Status: Museum ship, Hartlepool, England
General characteristics
Class and type: Leda-class frigate
Tons burthen: 1065.63 bm
Length:
  • 150 ft 4.5 in (45.834 m) (gundeck)
  • 125 ft 7.25 in (38.2842 m) (keel)
Beam: 39 ft 11.25 in (12.1730 m)
Depth of hold: 12 ft 9 in (3.89 m)
Sail plan: Full-rigged ship
Complement: 315 officers and men
Armament:
  • 38-guns: (classed as 46 as carronades were counted in armament from 1817)
    • Gundeck:
      • 28 × 18-pounders
    • Quarterdeck:
      • 14 × 32-pounder carronades
    • Forecastle:

History

1812–1847

Trincomalee is one of two surviving British frigates of her era—her near-sister HMS Unicorn (of the modified Leda class) is now a museum ship in Dundee. After being ordered on 30 October 1812, Trincomalee was built in Bombay, India, by the Wadia family [1] of shipwrights in teak, due to oak shortages in Britain as a result of shipbuilding drives for the Napoleonic Wars. The ship was named Trincomalee after the 1782 Battle of Trincomalee off the Ceylon (Sri Lanka) port of that name.

Work on the Trincomalee began in May 1816. Ceremonially an engraved silver nail was hammered into the ship's keel by the master shipbuilder Jamsetjee Bomanjee Wadia, this being considered vital for the ship's well-being, according to Parsi Zoroastrian tradition.[2]

With a construction cost of £23,000, Trincomalee was launched on 12 October 1817. Captain Philip Henry sailed her to Portsmouth Dockyard, where she arrived on 30 April 1819, with a journey costing £6,600.[3] During the maiden voyage the ship arrived at Saint Helena on 24 January 1819, where she stayed for 6 days, leaving with an additional passenger, a surgeon who had attended Napoleon at Longwood House on the island, Mr John Stokoe.[4]

After being fitted out at a further cost of £2,400, Trincomalee was placed in reserve until 1845, when she was re-armed with fewer guns giving greater firepower, had her stern reshaped and was reclassified as a sixth-rate spar-decked corvette.[5]

1847–1857

Trincomalee departed from Portsmouth in 1847 and remained in service for ten years, serving on the North American and West Indies station. During her time, she was to help quell riots in Haiti and stop a threatened invasion of Cuba, and serve on anti-slavery patrol. In 1849, she was despatched to Newfoundland and Labrador before being recalled to Britain in 1850. In 1852 she sailed to join the Pacific Squadron on the west coast of America.[6]

TS Foudroyant

Trincomalee finished her Royal Navy service as a training ship, but was placed in reserve again in 1895 and sold for scrap two years later on 19 May 1897. She was then purchased by entrepreneur George Wheatley Cobb, restored, and renamed Foudroyant in honour of HMS Foudroyant, his earlier ship that had been wrecked in 1897.[7]

She was used in conjunction with HMS Implacable as an accommodation ship, a training ship, and a holiday ship based in Falmouth then Portsmouth. She remained in service until 1986, after which she was again restored and renamed back to Trincomalee in 1992.[8]

Later years
HMS Trincomalee, stern quarter

Now listed as part of the National Historic Fleet, following her recent restoration Trincomalee has become the centrepiece of the National Museum of the Royal Navy based in Hartlepool.

Trincomalee holds the distinction of being the oldest British warship still afloat[9] as HMS Victory, although 52 years her senior, is in dry dock.

Until his death in 1929, the Falmouth-based painter Henry Scott Tuke used the ship and its trainees as subject matter.

  • Trincomalee beating out of San Francisco on 23 Sept 1854

See also

References
  1. "The Wadias of India". zoroastrian.org.uk. Retrieved 25 July 2015.
  2. "The History of HMS Trincomalee" (PDF).
  3. "Trincomalee Construction". The National Museum. Retrieved 25 July 2015.
  4. The Portsmouth Telegraph letter dated St. Helena Jan. 29, 1819
  5. "HMS Trincomalee - Royal Navy Service". The National Museum. Retrieved 25 July 2015.
  6. HMS Foudroyant
  7. "HMS Trincomalee - Training days as TS Foudroyant". The National Museum. Retrieved 25 July 2015.
  8. "Restoration and the present day". The National Museum. Retrieved 25 July 2015.
  9. "HMS Trincomalee - About us". The National Museum. Archived from the original on 21 November 2015. Retrieved 25 July 2015.

Further reading
  • Andrew Lambert – Trincomalee: the last of Nelson’s frigates, Chatham Publishing, 2002, ISBN 1-86176-186-4

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