HMS Piercer was a Royal Navy

Royal Navy

The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...

  launched in 1804. She served against the French, Danes and Dutch in the Napoleonic Wars

Napoleonic Wars

The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...

 and was assigned to the Downs

The Downs

The Downs are a roadstead or area of sea in the southern North Sea near the English Channel off the east Kent coast, between the North and the South Foreland in southern England. In 1639 the Battle of the Downs took place here, when the Dutch navy destroyed a Spanish fleet which had sought refuge...

 station. She participated in a number of operations in the Bay of Biscay

Bay of Biscay

The Bay of Biscay is a gulf of the northeast Atlantic Ocean located south of the Celtic Sea. It lies along the western coast of France from Brest south to the Spanish border, and the northern coast of Spain west to Cape Ortegal, and is named in English after the province of Biscay, in the Spanish...

, the English Channel

English Channel

The English Channel , often referred to simply as the Channel, is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that separates southern England from northern France, and joins the North Sea to the Atlantic. It is about long and varies in width from at its widest to in the Strait of Dover...

, and the North Sea

North Sea

In the southwest, beyond the Straits of Dover, the North Sea becomes the English Channel connecting to the Atlantic Ocean. In the east, it connects to the Baltic Sea via the Skagerrak and Kattegat, narrow straits that separate Denmark from Norway and Sweden respectively...

. In 1814 the British government transferred Piercer to the Kingdom of Hanover for use as a guard ship. Hanover decommissioned her in 1850.

British service

Lieutenant Thomas Carew commissioned Piercer in September 1804. The next year she came under the command of Lieutenant John Sibrell, who sailed her amongst the Channel Islands. In June 1805 Lieutenant Carter assumed command, apparently temporarily.

On 3 August 1805, Piercer was in a squadron with , , , , and when they captured the Frederick Wilhelm. At the time, Sibrell was in command of Piercer. Then on 8 April 1806, Basilisk captured the Mercurius. Piercer shared in the prize money by private agreement.

In January 1807, Sibrell sailed Piercer for the North Sea. On 15 October Piercer, and were in company at the capture of the Danish bark

Barque

A barque, barc, or bark is a type of sailing vessel with three or more masts.- History of the term :The word barque appears to have come from the Greek word baris, a term for an Egyptian boat. This entered Latin as barca, which gave rise to the Italian barca, Spanish barco, and the French barge and...

 Narbvalen. Piercer shared by agreement in the proceeds of 's capture of the Danish ship Gamble Norge. In November 1808 Sibrell captured the Danish vessels Catherina (4 November), and Speculation (6 November).

During the Gunboat War

Gunboat War

The Gunboat War was the naval conflict between Denmark–Norway and the British Navy during the Napoleonic Wars. The war's name is derived from the Danish tactic of employing small gunboats against the conventional Royal Navy...

, a flotilla of 25 Dano-Norwegian gunboats attacked a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 convoy on 9 June 1809 off the island of Saltholm

Saltholm

Saltholm is a Danish island in the Øresund, the strait that separates Denmark and Sweden. It is located to the east of the Danish island of Amager in Tårnby municipality and lies just to the west of the sea border between Denmark and Sweden. It is 7 km long and 3 km wide, covering an...

 in Øresund Strait near Copenhagen

Copenhagen

Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...

. Piercer was one of the four British warships escorting the convoy. During the engagement the Danes captured 10 or 12 merchant vessels, as well as the gunbrig .
captured two French chasse marees, the Camilla and the Bonne Rencontre, on 6 May 1810; Piercer and were in company. Piercer and the gun-brig were in company with Surveillante

French frigate Surveillante (1802)

The Surveillante entered service as a 40-gun Virginie class frigate of the French Navy. She was surrendered to the British in 1803, after which she served in the Royal Navy, classed under the British system as a 38 gun vessel, until 1814 when she was decommissioned...

 when on 23 June she captured the chasse marees Margaret and the Eclair.

On 12 September 1810, Piercer was in company with a squadron under the command of Rear Admiral Sir H.B. Neal when captured the chasse maree Sophie. The vessels sharing in the prize included Caledonia

HMS Caledonia (1808)

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....

, Valiant, , and the hired armed cutter Nimrod

Hired armed cutter Nimrod

During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars the Admiralty also made use of hired armed vessels, one of which was the hired armed cutter Nimrod. Three such vessels are recorded, but the descriptions of these vessels and the dates of their service are such that they may well represent one...

. The next day, Piercer captured the
French sloop Saint Pierre.

Piercer was part of a squadron under Captain James Newman-Newman in when the squadron captured the American vessel Beauty on 1 February 1811. Sibrell died in June and Lieutenant Joshua Kneeshaw assumed command.

On 14 August 1811 Piercer captured the chasse marees Marengo and Phillippe, off the Sables d'Olonne. Two weeks later, Piercer was in company with when they captured the Catharina Augusta.

In December Piercer witnessed an unfortunate occurrence for the Royal Navy. On the 27th, and sent 120 men in six boats to attack a French convoy sailing along the shore in the Basque Roads

Basque Roads

Basque Roads is a sheltered bay on the Biscay shore of the Charente-Maritime département of France, bounded by the Île d'Oléron to the west and the Île de Ré to the north...

. As the boats approached their quarry just south of the Chatillon Reef, the wind shifted, which permitted the convoy's escorts, three gun-brigs, an armed lugger

Lugger

A lugger is a class of boats, widely used as traditional fishing boats, particularly off the coasts of France, Scotland and England. It is a small sailing vessel with lugsails set on two or more masts and perhaps lug topsails.-Defining the rig:...

 and several pinnace

Pinnace (ship's boat)

As a ship's boat the pinnace is a light boat, propelled by sails or oars, formerly used as a "tender" for guiding merchant and war vessels. In modern parlance, pinnace has come to mean a boat associated with some kind of larger vessel, that doesn't fit under the launch or lifeboat definitions...

s, to sally out and get between the British boats and their parent vessels. The French then attacked the boats, which tried to board their attackers. One British boat escaped, but a French gunboat captured Colossuss barge. The other four British boats ran onshore where the French captured them and their crews. The French account differs slightly, in that the brigs are reported as gunboats no.s 184, 186, and 191, and the other French attackers are ships' boats. Furthermore, M. Jacob, the commander of the French naval forces, states that he had anticipated the British attack and had made no overt response until the British boats were compromised. The French reported capturing 113 men, perhaps including five British sailors who were killed, two who died soon after, and several who were dangerously wounded. When he saw the French attacking, Captain Lord William Stuart of Conquestador signaled Piercer to protect the British boats and sent her a boat with eighteen seamen and marines as reinforcements, but she was unable (or unwilling) to do so. The captured British sailors remained prisoners of war until the end of the war.

On 10 September 1812 Piercer was in sight, and so shared in the prize money, when Arminde

French frigate Armide (1804)

Armide was a 40-gun frigate of the French Navy, lead ship of her class, and launched in 1804 at Rochefort. She served briefly in the French navy before the British captured her in 1806. She went on to serve in the British Navy until 1815 when she was broken up.-French service:She took part in...

 captured the chasse maree Civilité'.

On 9 March 1813, Piercer recaptured the brig King George, of 100 tons (bm) and five men, which had been captured while sailing from Dublin to Newport.

By mid-1813, Piercer had been assigned to the Heligoland

Heligoland

Heligoland is a small German archipelago in the North Sea.Formerly Danish and British possessions, the islands are located in the Heligoland Bight in the south-eastern corner of the North Sea...

 squadron commanded by Captain A. Farquhar in . On 10 July the squadron captured 19 boats on the rivers Elbe

Elbe

The Elbe is one of the major rivers of Central Europe. It rises in the Krkonoše Mountains of the northwestern Czech Republic before traversing much of Bohemia , then Germany and flowing into the North Sea at Cuxhaven, 110 km northwest of Hamburg...

 and Weser.

Desiree arrived at Cuxhaven from Bremerlehe

Bremerhaven

Bremerhaven is a city at the seaport of the free city-state of Bremen, a state of the Federal Republic of Germany. It forms an enclave in the state of Lower Saxony and is located at the mouth of the River Weser on its eastern bank, opposite the town of Nordenham...

 on 28 November to join the squadron gathered by Shamrock. The British vessels had come to support the Russian troops under Colonel Alexander Radlinger, who were besieging the town. The squadron comprised , , Piercer, , , and the gun-boats No.s 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 10. The two key positions were the French forts Napoleon and Phare. While the gunboats fired on Phare, the British landed a number of guns and established a battery of six 18-pounders, two 32-pounders, and two 6-pounders. Before the battery could start firing on the 30th, the French surrendered both forts. The French surrendered 26 heavy guns, two 13" mortars, and a blockhouse with a garrison
of three hundred men and officers, all of whom became prisoners of war.

From late December 1813 Farquhar's squadron, comprising Desiree, Hearty, , Piercer, Shamrock, Redbreast, and eight gun-boats (the seven from Cuxhaven plus No. 12), supported Swedish forces under the command of General Baron de Boye against the Danes in the attack on the town and fortress of Gluckstadt

Glückstadt

Glückstadt is a town in the Steinburg district of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. It is located on the right bank of the Lower Elbe at the confluence of the small Rhin river, about northwest of Altona...

 at the Elbe

Elbe

The Elbe is one of the major rivers of Central Europe. It rises in the Krkonoše Mountains of the northwestern Czech Republic before traversing much of Bohemia , then Germany and flowing into the North Sea at Cuxhaven, 110 km northwest of Hamburg...

 river during the War of the Sixth Coalition

War of the Sixth Coalition

In the War of the Sixth Coalition , a coalition of Austria, Prussia, Russia, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Sweden, Spain and a number of German States finally defeated France and drove Napoleon Bonaparte into exile on Elba. After Napoleon's disastrous invasion of Russia, the continental powers...

. The British arrived on 23 December and by 25 December had erected a battery of two 32-pounder guns. (They had landed six but the poor quality of the roads meant that only two were in place.) To support the bombardment on the next day, Farquhar sent in the gunboats and the brigs, whose armament he had reinforced with two 18-pounders each from Desiree. The bombardment continued to the 28th. Gluckstadt having failed to surrender, Farquhar established three more batteries, one of two 18-pounders, one of four 32-pounders, and one of the two 13" mortars captured at Cuxhaven. An English rocket

Congreve rocket

The Congreve Rocket was a British military weapon designed and developed by Sir William Congreve in 1804.The rocket was developed by the British Royal Arsenal following the experiences of the Second, Third and Fourth Mysore Wars. The wars fought between the British East India Company and the...

 brigade under Lieutenant Amherst Wright contributed to the bombardment. These batteries commenced bombarding the town on 1 January 1814, keeping it up for the next two days. On 4 January Farquhar sent in a flag of truce, and after negotiations, the governor surrendered on 5 January. British casualties overall were light and Piercer had none.

Kneeshaw and Piercer brought the news back to Britain, arriving at the Admiralty on 12 January. That same day the Admiralty promoted Kneeshaw to Commander and re-rated Piercer as a sloop, congruent with his rank. On 15 July 1816 there was a first payment of £

£sd

£sd was the popular name for the pre-decimal currencies used in the Kingdom of England, later the United Kingdom, and ultimately in much of the British Empire...

5000 in prize money to the navy for the capitulation of Gluckstadt. The hired armed

Hired armed vessels

right|thumb|250px|Armed cutter, etching in the [[National Maritime Museum]], [[Greenwich]]During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the Royal Navy made use of a considerable number of hired armed vessels...

 cutter Princess Augusta

Hired armed cutter Princess Augusta

The Hired armed cutter Princess Augusta served the Royal Navy from 12 July 1803 to 2 May 1814. She was armed with eight 4-pounder guns, had a complement of 26 men, and was of 70 tons burthen...

, shared in the prize money. In appreciation of this operation the Swedish government awarded Kneeshaw, amongst others, a gold medal. In 1847, the Admiralty awarded the Naval General Service Medal with clasp "Gluckstadt 5 Jany. 1814" to all surviving claimants from the action.

Transferred to Hanover

On 4 June 1814, George III's birthday, she was transferred in an official ceremony to the Kingdom of Hanover

Kingdom of Hanover

The Kingdom of Hanover was established in October 1814 by the Congress of Vienna, with the restoration of George III to his Hanoverian territories after the Napoleonic era. It succeeded the former Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg , and joined with 38 other sovereign states in the German...

, following an Admiralty Order of 29 March. (The Kingdom of Hanover represented the restoration to George III of his Hanoverian territories after the Napoleonic Wars

Napoleonic Wars

The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...

.)

The Hanoverians appointed Joachim Deetjen as captain of Piercer, and he remained her captain, and commander of the customs service, until his death in 1827. Piercer thus became the only warship in the rather short history of the newly created kingdom (1814 – 1866) and she served as a customs guard ship on the river Elbe with Stade

Stade

Stade is a city in Lower Saxony, Germany and part of the Hamburg Metropolitan Region . It is the seat of the district named after it...

 as her homeport.The customs service also maintained a cutter and some sloops. Deetjen's successor was Major Carl August Delius, who had served with the British at the Battle of Talavera, where he had lost an arm. He died in 1833 and on 22 November lieutenant colonel Andreas Schlüter became the last commander of the Elbe customs service. Although Piercer was initially suitable as a customs vessel, she and the other sailing vessels could not cope as steamships

Steamboat

A steamboat or steamship, sometimes called a steamer, is a ship in which the primary method of propulsion is steam power, typically driving propellers or paddlewheels...

replaced sail. In 1850 the King ordered Piercer to be laid up, and on 20 October Schlüter tendered his resignation.

External links

• http://www.pbenyon.plus.com/18-1900/P/03520.html Naval Database - HMS Piercer