HMS Dauntless (1808)

History

The second HMS "Dauntless" was a sixth rate sloop of the Royal Navy armed with 24 carronades and two 6-pounder guns.

She was built in Deptford Dockyard as a "Cormorant"-class sloop. Her first service was in November 1809 when she escorted a convoy to the African coast, returning in early 1810 to cruise against enemy shipping in the North Sea and to escort convoys to North Russia. In the autumn of 1811 she was sent to the Cork Station, and after refitting at Portsmouth in early 1814 she served on the Newfoundland Station. In January 1816, as the Royal Navy contracted after the end of the Napoleonic Wars, she paid off at Portsmouth.

In November 1818 she was recommissioned for service in the East Indies. Over the next 5 years "Dauntless" visited China, New Zealand, South America, the Pacific archipelagos and New South Wales. Her Captain, George Gambier, in company with members of the Philosophical Society of Australasia fixed a suitably engraved bronze tablet on a "beetling rock" on the south head of Botany Bay to commemorate the first landing of Captain James Cook and Sir Joseph Banks in Australia in 1770. The tablet has not been seen for some years. "Dauntless" sailed through Torres Strait to Trincomalee to rejoin the fleet, and returned to Portsmouth to pay off in October 1823. She was sold for breaking in 1825.

Commanding Officers

References

*Colledge
* Age of Nelson website - [http://www.ageofnelson.org/index.html Age of Nelson]