Ten ships and one shore establishment of the British
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 ''Hornet'', after the
insect
Insects (from Latin ') are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body ( head, thorax and abdomen), three pairs ...
:
* , 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. She was in French hands between 1746 and 1747, and was sold in 1770.
* , a 16-gun
cutter purchased in 1763 and sold in 1772.
* , a 14-gun sloop launched in 1776 and sold in 1791.
* , a 16-gun sloop launched in 1794, hospital ship from 1805 to 1811, and sold in 1817.
* , a 4-gun Dutch
hoy
Hoy ( sco, Hoy; from Norse , meaning "high island") is an island in Orkney, Scotland, measuring – the second largest in the archipelago, after Mainland. A natural causeway, ''the Ayre'', links the island to the smaller South Walls; the two ...
purchased as a
gunvessel
A gunboat is a naval watercraft designed for the express purpose of carrying one or more guns to bombard coastal targets, as opposed to those military craft designed for naval warfare, or for ferrying troops or supplies.
History Pre-steam ...
in 1794 and broken up in 1795.
* , a 6-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 ...
launched in 1831 and completed as a
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 ...
. She was broken up in 1845.
* , a wooden screw sloop, initially ordered as a schooner, launched in 1854 and broken up in 1868.
* , a composite screw gunvessel launched in 1868 and sold in 1899.
* , a launched in 1893 and broken up in 1909.
* , an launched in 1911 and broken up in 1921.
* , a
stone frigate
A stone frigate is a naval establishment on land.
"Stone frigate" is an informal term that has its origin in Britain's Royal Navy after its use of Diamond Rock, an island off Martinique, as a ' sloop of war' to harass the French in 1803–04 ...
, a
Coastal Forces Base at
Gosport
Gosport ( ) is a town and non-metropolitan borough on the south coast of Hampshire, South East England. At the 2011 Census, its population was 82,662. Gosport is situated on a peninsula on the western side of Portsmouth Harbour, opposite t ...
formed around 1941 and disbanded in 1956.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hornet, Hms
Royal Navy ship names