History | |
---|---|
United Kingdom | |
Name | HMS Thames |
Ordered | 1 May 1804 |
Builder | Chatham Dockyard (Shipwright Robert Seppings) |
Laid down | July 1804 |
Launched | 24 October 1805 |
Commissioned | November 1805 |
Fate | Broken up October 1816 |
General characteristics [1] | |
Class and type | 32-gun fifth rate Thames-class frigate |
Tons burthen | 66127⁄94 bm |
Length |
|
Beam | 34 ft 1 in (10.39 m) |
Depth of hold | 11 ft 9 in (3.58 m) |
Complement | 220 |
Armament |
|
HMS Thames was a 32-gun fifth-rate Thames-class frigate of the Royal Navy, launched in 1805 at Chatham.
A wartime lack of building materials meant that Minerva and her class were built to the outdated 50-year-old design of the Richmond class, and were thus smaller than many contemporary frigates.[2]
Thames was expected to be commissioned by Captain John Loring but a delay in such meant that Thames's first captain was actually Captain Bridges Taylor, who commissioned Thames in November 1805.[3][2] On 9 July 1806, Thames, Phoebe and Blanchewere directed towards Shetland to intercept French frigates that were menacing the fishing vessels.[4] Thames initially served on the Downs Station before briefly serving on the Jamaica Station and in the Mediterranean from 3 March 1807.[2] In April 1808 Thames returned to Portsmouth where Captain George Waldegrave assumed command and then sailed again for the Mediterranean.[3] On 27 July 1810 Thames was serving alongside the sloops Pilot and HMS Weazel; together they drove an enemy convoy ashore at Amantea and took six gunboats, two large galleys, and twenty-eight transports with their subsequent landing parties.[2][3] The destruction of the convoy halted Joachim Murat's planned invasion of Sicily.[3] From June 1810 Thames served with the sloop Cephalus; on 16 June a convoy the ships had been following was found beached at Cetraro and a landing party of 180 men burned the entire convoy.[3] After this command of Thames transferred to Captain Charles Napier.[2]
On 20 July 1811 Thames and Cephalus attacked and captured the fort at Porto del Infrischi and in turn captured eleven gunboats, an armed felucca, and fourteen merchant vessels.[3] In September Thames came under the orders of Captain Henry Duncan in HMS Imperieuse and together they captured ten Neapolitan gunboats at Palinuro on 2 November.[2] In the spring of 1812 Napier became the senior naval officer on the coast of Calabria and as such Thames and Pilot captured Sapri on 14 May after a two-hour bombardment, capturing twenty-nine merchant vessels.[3] In February 1813 it was found that the island of Ponza was a hub for enemy privateers and so on 16 February Thames and the frigate HMS Furieuse embarked two battalions of soldiers and landed them under fire at Ponza on 26 February.[3][2] With support from the frigates the soldiers took the heights of the island, inducing its governor to surrender.[3]
In April Captain John Purvis replaced Napier in command, taking Thames to Sheerness where she was refitted as a troopship between August 1813 and January 1814 to serve on the North America Station under the command of Commander Kenelm Somerville.[2][3] In August 1814 Thames, now under Commander Charles Leonard Irby, participated in the expedition up the Patuxent River to attack the Chesapeake Bay Flotilla, which resulted in the burning of Washington.[2][3] Under the rules of prize-money, Thames shared in the proceeds of the capture of the American vessels in the Battle of Lake Borgne on 14 December 1814.[a][b] In May 1815 Thames returned to England under the command of Commander William Walpole and was broken up at Plymouth in October 1816.[2]