Five ships of the

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against F ...

have been named HMS ''Achates'' after

Achates In Greek mythology, Greek and Roman mythology, Achates (Ancient Greek: Ἀχάτης) may refer to the following personages: *Achates (Aeneid), Achates, a companion of the exiled Aeneas. * Achates, a Sicily, Sicilian who came to Aristaeus in orde ...

, a character in

Roman mythology Roman mythology is the body of myths of ancient Rome as represented in the literature and visual arts of the Romans. One of a wide variety of genres of Roman folklore, ''Roman mythology'' may also refer to the modern study of these representat ...

. A sixth was planned but never completed: * was a 13-gun ship launched in 1573, hulked in 1590 and sold in 1605. * was a 10-gun launched in 1808 and wrecked in 1810 off

Guadeloupe Guadeloupe (; ; gcf, label=Antillean Creole, Gwadloup, ) is an archipelago and overseas department and region of France in the Caribbean. It consists of six inhabited islands—Basse-Terre, Grande-Terre, Marie-Galante, La Désirade, and the ...

. * was a 16-gun brig-sloop, originally the French ''Milan'', launched in 1807, that HMS ''Surveillante'' captured on 30 October 1809, and that was sold in 1818. * was an launched in 1912 and sold in 1921. * was an A-class destroyer launched in 1929 and sunk in 1942 by the German cruiser . * was to have been an . She was launched in 1945, but was never completed, and was sunk as a target in 1950. *A fictional HMS ''Achates'', a 64-gun ship of the line, appears in ''Success to the Brave'', the 15th novel in the Richard Bolitho series written by

Douglas Reeman Douglas Edward Reeman (15 October 1924 – 23 January 2017), who also used the pseudonym Alexander Kent, was a British author who wrote many historical novels about the Royal Navy, mainly set during either World War II or the Napoleonic Wars. He w ...

(writing as Alexander Kent).

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Achates, Hms Royal Navy ship names