Sixteen 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 been named HMS ''Pelican'', after the
bird
Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweigh ...
, while another was planned:
*''Pelican'' was an 18-gun
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 ...
. She was part of
Sir Francis Drake's global circumnavigation expedition in 1577 and was renamed ''
Golden Hind'' in 1578. It is unlikely that she was ever commissioned in the Royal Navy.
* was a ship captured in 1626 and sold in 1629.
* was a 10-gun ship in
Royalist
A royalist supports a particular monarch as head of state for a particular kingdom, or of a particular dynastic claim. In the abstract, this position is royalism. It is distinct from monarchism, which advocates a monarchical system of governme ...
service between 1646 and 1648 during the
English Civil War
The English Civil War (1642–1651) was a series of civil wars and political machinations between Parliamentarians (" Roundheads") and Royalists led by Charles I ("Cavaliers"), mainly over the manner of England's governance and issues of re ...
.
* was a 38-gun ship launched in 1650 and burnt by accident in 1656.
* 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 ...
, previously in civilian service as ''St George''. She was purchased in 1757 and sold in 1763.
* was a 10-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 ...
, originally a French privateer. She was captured in 1775 and assigned to harbour duties in 1776. She was renamed ''Earl of Denbigh'' in 1777 and sank in 1787.
* HMS ''Pelican'' was the American Bermuda-built sloop ''Adriana'' of 150 tons (bm), that the British captured in 1777 and took into service to replace her predecessor.
* was a 24-gun
sixth-rate
In the rating system of the Royal Navy used to categorise sailing warships, a sixth-rate was the designation for small warships mounting between 20 and 28 carriage-mounted guns on a single deck, sometimes with smaller guns on the upper works and ...
launched in 1777. She foundered in 1781.
* was a 16-gun
brig-sloop, originally the French privateer ''Frédéric''.
[Demerliac (1996), p.198, #1983.] captured her in 1781; ''Pelican'' was sold in 1783.
* was an 18-gun sloop launched in 1795 and sold in 1806.
* was a 16-gun brig-sloop, previously the French navy brig ''Voltigeur''. She was captured in 1806 by and was sold in 1812.
* was an 18-gun launched in 1812. She was reassigned as a customs watchvessel in 1847 and was renamed ''WV'' 29 in 1863, finally being sold in 1865.
* was a wooden
screw sloop launched in 1860 and sold into civilian service in 1867 and renamed ''Hawk''. She was resold to the Portuguese Navy and renamed ''Infanta Dom Henrique''.
* was a composite screw launched in 1877. She was sold to the
Hudson's Bay Company
The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC; french: Compagnie de la Baie d'Hudson) is a Canadian retail business group. A fur trading business for much of its existence, HBC now owns and operates retail stores in Canada. The company's namesake business div ...
as a supply ship in 1901 and was scuttled in 1953.
* was tender, previously the
War Department vessel ''Sir J. Jones''. She was transferred to the Royal Navy in 1906. She was renamed HMS ''Petulant'' in 1916 and was sold in 1927.
* 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 1916 and sold in 1921 and broken up in 1924.
* was an launched in 1938 and broken up in 1958.
*HMS ''Pelican'' was to have been a
survey vessel, but she was cancelled in 1967.
See also
References
*
*Demerliac, Alain (1996) ''La Marine De Louis XVI: Nomenclature Des Navires Français De 1774 À 1792''. (Nice: Éditions OMEGA).
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pelican, Hms
Royal Navy ship names