Hired armed cutter Earl St Vincent
Encyclopedia
Two vessels have been named 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 Earl St Vincent.The name Earl St Vincent comes from John Jervis, 1st Earl of St Vincent
John Jervis, 1st Earl of St Vincent
Admiral of the Fleet John Jervis, 1st Earl of St Vincent GCB, PC was an admiral in the Royal Navy and Member of Parliament in the United Kingdom...

.

The first Earl St Vincent

The first Hired armed cutter Earl St Vincent (or Earl of St Vincent) served the 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...

 from 16 March 1798 to 29 April 1802, when she was returned to her owners. She was armed with 14 or 16 cannon and had a crew of 56 men and a burthen of 185 tons (bm
Builder's Old Measurement
Builder's Old Measurement is the method of calculating the size or cargo capacity of a ship used in England from approximately 1720 to 1849. It estimated the tonnage of a ship based on length and maximum beam...

).

In 1798 and 1799 she was in the Mediterranean where she carried letters and despatches for Lord Nelson
Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson
Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson, 1st Duke of Bronté, KB was a flag officer famous for his service in the Royal Navy, particularly during the Napoleonic Wars. He was noted for his inspirational leadership and superb grasp of strategy and unconventional tactics, which resulted in a number of...

. In 1799, at least, she was under the command of Lieutenant Sargeant. On 25 July 1800 she captured the Revanche.

On 6 May 1800, His Majesty's Hired Armed Schooner Earl St Vincent, under the command of Lieutenant Henry Boys, captured the Spanish privateer Santa Ysabella (alias Saavedra).

In 1801 she was under the command of Lieutenant H. Boys (Boyce) at Plymouth. She sailed on 20 January for Jamaica with the King's proclamation for stopping all Russian, Danish and Swedish vessels. However, between 26-28 January she was in company with a number of other vessels at the capture of the French 36-gun frigate Dédaigneuse
French frigate Dédaigneuse (1799)
The Dédaigneuse was a 40-gun Coquille-class frigate of the French Navy.-French service:On 30 December 1800, as she was taking political prisoners at Cayenne to bring them back to France under Captain Prevost Lacroix, she spotted , but to no avail....

, afterwards added to the British navy under the same name. On 27 January she was in company with and when they captured the Spanish ship Carlotta. On 5 May Earl St Vincent and captured the Phoenix.

Earl St Vincent returned to Portsmouth on 2 July. When she returned to Plymouth on 8 July she brought in the Cheri, a valuable French brig, bound for Bordeaux from Cayenne with a cargo of cocoa, coffee and dye-wood. She and Naiad had captured Cheri on 8 April 1801.

On 21 July Lieutenant Boyce received orders to fit for foreign service and the following day he went into the Sound and sailed with a convoy to the eastward. On 6 August she captured the French schooner Elise, in sight of . On 26 August she brought in to Plymouth two rich Spanish prizes that she had captured of Cape Ortegal.

On 2 November at the height of a gale, Earl St Vincent, which was moored to the south of St Nicholas' Island (now Drake's Island), parted both anchors and scudded through the sound under bare poles to the entrance of the Cattewater. By skillful steering she ran through two lines of trawlers, missed both pier-heads and finished up on the mud in Sutton Pool, quite safe.

The second Earl St Vincent

The second Earl St Vincent was a cutter of fourteen 12-pounder carronade
Carronade
The carronade was a short smoothbore, cast iron cannon, developed for the Royal Navy by the Carron Company, an ironworks in Falkirk, Scotland, UK. It was used from the 1770s to the 1850s. Its main function was to serve as a powerful, short-range anti-ship and anti-crew weapon...

s and 19416/94 tons burthen (bm
Builder's Old Measurement
Builder's Old Measurement is the method of calculating the size or cargo capacity of a ship used in England from approximately 1720 to 1849. It estimated the tonnage of a ship based on length and maximum beam...

) that served the Royal Navy from 3 May 1804 until 3 March 1806 when she was returned to her owners. In 1806 her name was changed to St Vincent.

In 1804 she was under the command of Lieutenant William Shepheard who transferred from Basilisk
HMS Basilisk (1801)
HMS Basilisk was a built by Randall in Rotherhithe and launched in 1801. She served during the Napoleonic Wars protecting convoys from privateers, conducting close-inshore surveillance and taking enemy coastal shipping. She served briefly at the end of the French Revolutionary Wars, with most of...

. Earl St Vincent left Portsmouth Harbour on 8 May to take an American convoy to the westward. She spent more than two years cruising on the coast of Scotland, around the Orkney and Shetland islands, and in the Baltic. The general promotion following the Battle of Trafalgar
Battle of Trafalgar
The Battle of Trafalgar was a sea battle fought between the British Royal Navy and the combined fleets of the French Navy and Spanish Navy, during the War of the Third Coalition of the Napoleonic Wars ....

 missed Lieutenant Shepheard, who complained, but to no immediate avail. Still, on 15 August 1806 he was promoted to the command of Demarara.
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