Seventeen 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 ''Dispatch'', or the variant HMS ''Despatch'': * was a 2-gun

brigantine A brigantine is a two-masted sailing vessel with a fully square-rigged foremast and at least two sails on the main mast: a square topsail and a gaff sail mainsail (behind the mast). The main mast is the second and taller of the two masts. Older ...

launched in 1691 and sold in 1712. * was a 14-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 1745 and sold in 1763. * was a 14-gun sloop that foundered in a hurricane in 1772. She may have been salved and sold in 1773. * was an 8-gun sloop captured in 1776 by the American

privateer A privateer is a private person or ship that engages in maritime warfare under a commission of war. Since robbery under arms was a common aspect of seaborne trade, until the early 19th century all merchant ships carried arms. A sovereign or deleg ...

.Hepper (1994), pp. 49-50. * HMS ''Despatch'' was a transport purchased in 1774 as the 6-gun armed ship . She was renamed HMS ''Despatch'' in 1777 and sold in 1783. * was a 16-gun sloop launched in 1777. She capsized in 1778. * was an 8-gun

schooner A schooner () is a type of sailing vessel defined by its rig: fore-and-aft rigged on all of two or more masts and, in the case of a two-masted schooner, the foremast generally being shorter than the mainmast. A common variant, the topsail schoon ...

purchased in 1780 and sold in 1795. * HMS ''Dispatch'' was a 14-gun sloop launched in 1779 as . She was renamed HMS ''Navy Transport'' in 1782, HMS ''Dispatch'' in 1783 and was sold in 1798. * was a sloop captured from the French in 1790 and sold in 1801. * was a 16-gun launched in 1795 and never commissioned but instead sold to the Russian Navy that year, and transferred in 1796. She was wrecked in 1805. * was a 6-gun tender in service between 1797 and 1801. * HMS ''Dispatch'' (1799) was an 18-gun sloop, previously the French privateer ''Indefatigable''. She was captured in 1799 and sold in 1801. * was an 18-gun launched in 1804 and broken up in 1811. * was an 18-gun ''Cruizer''-class brig-sloop launched in 1812 and sold in 1836. She burnt at sea on 11 March 1839. * was a 6-gun brig-storeship transferred from the Transport Office c. 1816. She was hulked in 1820, used as a sheer hulk from 1826 and wrecked in 1846. She was ordered to be broken up, but remained listed until 1865. * 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 1851. She became Watch Vessel No. 24 under the name HMS ''Cadmus'' in 1863, and was sold in 1901. * was a

light cruiser A light cruiser is a type of small or medium-sized warship. The term is a shortening of the phrase "light armored cruiser", describing a small ship that carried armor in the same way as an armored cruiser: a protective belt and deck. Prior to thi ...

launched in 1919 and sold in 1946.

Citations and references

Citations References * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Dispatch Royal Navy ship names