HMS Nassau (1866)
HMS Nassau was a Cormorant-class wooden-hulled gun vessel of the Royal Navy.[1] She was the sixth and to date last Royal Navy ship to bear that name.
Powered by screw propulsion with a displacement of 877 tons, she was launched at Pembroke Dockyard on 20 February 1866[2] and completed into a survey ship that July.[1]
Her first commander was Captain Charles Richard Mayne and her first mission to re-survey the passage north into the Pacific and the Straits of Magellan in South America,[1] as recorded in her log kept at The National Archives.[3] Robert Oliver Cunningham was aboard as naturalist on that voyage and collected the holotype of Maynea on the voyage, naming it after Captain Mayne.[citation needed]
She then moved on to surveying on the China Station under Commander William Chimmo (1870–1873), mostly carrying out sub-surface temperature measurements and deep-sea soundings,[2] though also sending men ashore in boats to destroy a pirate stronghold in the Sulu Archipelago in 1872. During that posting she also experienced a typhoon on 28 September 1870 whilst anchored at Hong Kong. Next she moved to the East Indies Station under Lieutenant Francis John Gray (1873–1875)[1] surveying East Africa[2] and joined with HMS London's boats and fellow gun vessel HMS Rifleman in 1875 to bombard Mombasa. Her final posting was a brief period back on the China Station[2] before being broken up in 1880.[1]
References
[edit]- ^ a b c d e "HMS Nassau (1866)". The Victorian Navy.
- ^ a b c d "Captain Haughton Forrest (1825-1924), H.M.S. Nassau passing the P. & O. steamer Deccan, probably off Suez and H.M.S. Nassau at Hong Kong during a typhoon on 26th September 1870".
- ^ "Records of the Admiralty, Naval Forces, Royal Marines, Coastguard, and related bodies - Records of the Surveyor of the Navy and successors - Navy Board and Admiralty: Office of the Controller of the Navy and predecessors: Ships' Books (Series I) (ADM 135/318)". The National Archives.