Six 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 ''Opossum'', after the
opossum
Opossums () are members of the marsupial order Didelphimorphia () endemic to the Americas. The largest order of marsupials in the Western Hemisphere, it comprises 93 species in 18 genera. Opossums originated in South America and entered North ...
:
* was a launched in 1808 and sold in 1819.
* was a ''Cherokee''-class brig-sloop launched in 1821 and sold in 1841.
* was an wooden screw
gunboat
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 ...
launched in 1856. She became a hospital hulk in 1876, and a mooring vessel in 1891. She was renamed HMS ''Siren'' in 1895 and was sold in 1896.
* was a launched in 1895 and sold in 1920.
* was a
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 1944 and broken up in 1960.
* was an launched in 1963 and broken up in 1996.
References
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Opossum, Hms
Royal Navy ship names