HMS Trincomalee
Encyclopedia
HMS Trincomalee is 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...
Leda-class
Leda class frigate
The Leda-class frigates, were a successful class of forty-seven British Royal Navy 38-gun sailing frigates. The design of Leda was based on the Sané-designed Hébé, a French Hébé class frigate that the British 44-gun fifth rate HMS Rainbow captured in 1782...
sailing frigate built shortly following the end of 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...
. She is now restored as a museum ship in Hartlepool
Hartlepool
Hartlepool is a town and port in North East England.It was founded in the 7th century AD, around the Northumbrian monastery of Hartlepool Abbey. The village grew during the Middle Ages and developed a harbour which served as the official port of the County Palatine of Durham. A railway link from...
, UK.
History
She was ordered on 30 October 1812 from India and was finally launched on 12 October 1817. Soon after completion she was sailed to Portsmouth Dockyard, where she arrived on 3 April 1819 and was promptly laid up in reserve. She was cut down to a 26-gun sixth-rateSixth-rate
Sixth rate was the designation used by the Royal Navy for small warships mounting between 20 and 24 nine-pounder guns on a single deck, sometimes with guns on the upper works and sometimes without.-Rating:...
corvette
Corvette
A corvette is a small, maneuverable, lightly armed warship, originally smaller than a frigate and larger than a coastal patrol craft or fast attack craft , although many recent designs resemble frigates in size and role...
at Portsmouth between April 1845 and September 1847, then fitted for sea service at a combined cost of £21,643.
After serving as a hulk
Hulk (ship)
A hulk is a ship that is afloat, but incapable of going to sea. Although sometimes used to describe a ship that has been launched but not completed, the term most often refers to an old ship that has had its rigging or internal equipment removed, retaining only its flotational qualities...
, she was restored to her original appearance, and now serves as a museum ship
Museum ship
A museum ship, or sometimes memorial ship, is a ship that has been preserved and converted into a museum open to the public, for educational or memorial purposes...
.
The Trincomalee is one of two surviving British frigates of this era — her near-sister HMS Unicorn
HMS Unicorn (1824)
HMS Unicorn and her near-sister ship, HMS Trincomalee, are surviving sailing frigates of the successful Leda class, although the original design had been modified by the time that the Unicorn was built, to incorporate a circular stern and "small-timber" system of construction...
(of the modified Leda class) is now a museum ship in Dundee
Dundee
Dundee is the fourth-largest city in Scotland and the 39th most populous settlement in the United Kingdom. It lies within the eastern central Lowlands on the north bank of the Firth of Tay, which feeds into the North Sea...
. The Trincomalee was built in Bombay, India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
in 1817 by the Wadia family of shipwrights in teak
Teak
Teak is the common name for the tropical hardwood tree species Tectona grandis and its wood products. Tectona grandis is native to south and southeast Asia, mainly India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Burma, but is naturalized and cultivated in many countries, including those in Africa and the...
, due to oak shortages in Britain as a result of shipbuilding drives for the Napoleonic Wars. The ship was named Trincomalee
Trincomalee
Trincomalee is a port city in Eastern Province, Sri Lanka and lies on the east coast of the island, about 113 miles south of Jaffna. It has a population of approximately 100,000 . The city is built on a peninsula, which divides the inner and outer harbours. Overlooking the Kottiyar Bay,...
after an action in 1782 between the Royal and French navies off the Ceylon (Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...
) port of that name.
Trincomalee finished her Royal Navy service as a training ship, but was 'reduced to reserve' in 1895 and sold for scrap 2 years later on 19 May 1897. However she was then purchased by George Wheatley Cobb, restored, and renamed Foudroyant in honour of HMS Foudroyant
HMS Foudroyant (1798)
HMS Foudroyant was an 80-gun third rate of the Royal Navy. She was built at Plymouth Dockyard and launched on 31 March 1798.Goodwin gives the launch date for Foudroyant as 31 March, 25 May, and 31 August. The text highlights this discrepancy and attributes the August date to Lyon's Sailing Navy...
, his earlier ship that had been wrecked in 1897. She was used in conjunction with HMS Implacable
HMS Implacable (1805)
HMS Implacable was a 74-gun third rate of the Royal Navy. She was originally the French Navy's Téméraire-class ship of the line Duguay-Trouin, launched in 1800....
as an accommodation ship, a training ship, and a holiday ship based in Falmouth
Falmouth, Cornwall
Falmouth is a town, civil parish and port on the River Fal on the south coast of Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It has a total resident population of 21,635.Falmouth is the terminus of the A39, which begins some 200 miles away in Bath, Somerset....
then Portsmouth and remained in service until 1991 when she was again restored and renamed back to Trincomalee. Until his death in 1929, the Falmouth-based painter Henry Scott Tuke
Henry Scott Tuke
Henry Scott Tuke, RA RWS , was a British visual artist; primarily a painter, but also a photographer. His most notable work was in the Impressionist style, and he is probably best known for his paintings of nude boys and young men....
used the ship and its trainees as subject matter.
The Trincomalee holds the distinction of being the oldest British warship still afloat as HMS Victory
HMS Victory
HMS Victory is a 104-gun first-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, laid down in 1759 and launched in 1765. She is most famous as Lord Nelson's flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805....
, although 52 years her senior, is in dry dock
Dry dock
A drydock is a narrow basin or vessel that can be flooded to allow a load to be floated in, then drained to allow that load to come to rest on a dry platform...
.
Now listed as part of the National Historic Fleet, Core Collection
National Historic Fleet, Core Collection
The National Historic Fleet, Core Collection is a list of museum ships located in the United Kingdom, under the National Historic Ships register.The vessels on the National Historic Fleet are distinguished by:...
, following her recent restoration the Trincomalee has become the centrepiece of the historic dockyard museum in Hartlepool
Hartlepool
Hartlepool is a town and port in North East England.It was founded in the 7th century AD, around the Northumbrian monastery of Hartlepool Abbey. The village grew during the Middle Ages and developed a harbour which served as the official port of the County Palatine of Durham. A railway link from...
, United Kingdom
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...
, known as 'Hartlepool's Maritime Experience
Hartlepool's Maritime Experience
Hartlepool's Maritime Experience is a visitor attraction in Hartlepool, County Durham, in the northeast of England. The concept of the attraction is the thematic re-creation of an 18th century seaport, in the time of Lord Nelson, Napoleon and the Battle of Trafalgar. HMS Trincomalee, a Royal Navy...
', which also includes PS Wingfield Castle
PS Wingfield Castle
The PS Wingfield Castle is a former Humber Estuary ferry, now preserved as a museum ship in Hartlepool, County Durham, England.The Wingfield Castle was built William Gray & Company at Hartlepool, and launched in 1934, along with a sister ship, the Tattershall Castle...
.
See also
- HMS VictoryHMS VictoryHMS Victory is a 104-gun first-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, laid down in 1759 and launched in 1765. She is most famous as Lord Nelson's flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805....
- 18th century first rate ship of the lineShip of the lineA ship of the line was a type of naval warship constructed from the 17th through the mid-19th century to take part in the naval tactic known as the line of battle, in which two columns of opposing warships would manoeuvre to bring the greatest weight of broadside guns to bear... - USS ConstitutionUSS ConstitutionUSS Constitution is a wooden-hulled, three-masted heavy frigate of the United States Navy. Named by President George Washington after the Constitution of the United States of America, she is the world's oldest floating commissioned naval vessel...
- 18th century US Navy frigate - HMS UnicornHMS Unicorn (1824)HMS Unicorn and her near-sister ship, HMS Trincomalee, are surviving sailing frigates of the successful Leda class, although the original design had been modified by the time that the Unicorn was built, to incorporate a circular stern and "small-timber" system of construction...
- a surviving sister ship - Historical Maritime SocietyHistorical Maritime SocietyThe Historical Maritime Society is a United Kingdom - based historical reenactment organisation researching and portraying life in Horatio Nelson's Royal Navy...
- List of Royal Navy ships in the Pacific Northwest
Further reading
- Andrew Lambert - Trincomalee: the last of Nelson’s frigates, Chatham Publishing, 2002, ISBN 1-86176-186-4
External links
- HMS Trincomalee official website
- YouTube Channel Online video resource set up by Hartlepool College, which features short films about the history, culture and current activities of the town, including the Tall Ships Race 2010 and several featuring HMS Trincomalee
- The perfecting of the wooden man-of-war in the context of early 19th century international politics
- Current location on Wikimapia