Four 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 ''Morning Star'', after the poetic name for

Venus Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is sometimes called Earth's "sister" or "twin" planet as it is almost as large and has a similar composition. As an interior planet to Earth, Venus (like Mercury) appears in Earth's sky never fa ...

: * was a 14-gun

ketch A ketch is a two- masted sailboat whose mainmast is taller than the mizzen mast (or aft-mast), and whose mizzen mast is stepped forward of the rudder post. The mizzen mast stepped forward of the rudder post is what distinguishes the ketch fr ...

captured from the Dutch in 1672 and given away in 1674. * was a cutter purchased in 1763 and sold in 1773. She then underwent a large repair and became a

slave ship Slave ships were large cargo ships specially built or converted from the 17th to the 19th century for transporting slaves. Such ships were also known as "Guineamen" because the trade involved human trafficking to and from the Guinea coast ...

, first under her existing name and then as ''Fanny''. She was last listed in 1778. * was a 16-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 ...

, formerly 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 ...

''Congress'' that HMS captured in 1781; the Navy sold her in 1782. * was an M-class

destroyer In naval terminology, a destroyer is a fast, manoeuvrable, long-endurance warship intended to escort larger vessels in a fleet, convoy or battle group and defend them against powerful short range attackers. They were originally developed in ...

launched in 1915 and sold in 1921. Note: Colledge & Warlow list an HMS ''Morning Star'' and describe her a 22-gun sloop of 350 tons burthen launched in 1799 at the

Bombay Dockyard Bombay Dockyard, also known as Naval Dockyard, is an Indian shipbuilding yard at Mumbai. The superintendent of the dockyard is a Naval Officer of the rank Rear Admiral, known as the Admiral Superintendent. Background Shipbuilding was an establ ...

for the Indian avy However, there was no Indian Navy at the time, only the Bombay Marine, the naval arm of the British

East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and Southea ...

. More critically, the most complete list of ships built at the Bombay Dockyard shows no such vessel. It does show a ''Mornington'', of 22 guns and 438 tons burthen being launched in 1799. She was later sold at auction.

Citations

References

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Morning Star, Hms Royal Navy ship names