Seven 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 borne the name HMS ''Bittern'', after the bird, the
bittern
Bitterns are birds belonging to the subfamily Botaurinae of the heron family Ardeidae. Bitterns tend to be shorter-necked and more secretive than other members of the family. They were called ''hæferblæte'' in Old English; the word "bittern" ...
:
* was an 18-gun
sloop
A sloop is a sailboat with a single mast typically having only one headsail in front of the mast and one mainsail aft of (behind) the mast. Such an arrangement is called a fore-and-aft rig, and can be rigged as a Bermuda rig with triangular sa ...
launched in 1796 and sold in 1833.
* was a 12-gun
brig
A brig is a type of sailing vessel defined by its rig: two masts which are both square rig, square-rigged. Brigs originated in the second half of the 18th century and were a common type of smaller merchant vessel or warship from then until the ...
launched in 1840 and sold in 1860.
*HMS ''Bittern'' (1861) was to have been a wood
screw sloop
A screw sloop is a propeller-driven sloop-of-war. In the 19th century, during the introduction of the steam engine, ships driven by propellers were differentiated from those driven by paddle-wheels by referring to the ship's ''screws'' (propelle ...
. She was ordered in 1861, but construction was cancelled in 1864.
* was a wood screw gunvessel launched in 1869 and sold in 1887.
* was an launched in 1897 and sunk in a collision in 1918.
*HMS ''Bittern'' was to have been a sloop, but she was renamed before her launch.
* was a ''Bittern''-class sloop, launched in 1937 and sunk in 1940.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bittern, Hms
Royal Navy ship names