Eight 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 ''Rattler'': * 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 ...

launched in 1783 and sold in 1792. She then made two voyages as a whaler and two voyages as 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 ...

before she was condemned as unseaworthy in 1802. She returned to service though, sailing as a whaler in the northern whale fishery, sailing out of Leith. She continued whaling until ice crushed her in June 1830. * HMS Rattler (1793) was a hired cutter serving from 1793 until 1796 until the Navy purchased her and renamed her . ''Sparrow'' was broken up in 1805. * was a 16-gun sloop launched in 1795 and sold in 1815. * was the mercantile ''Hope'' that the Royal Navy purchased at Leith in 1797. It initially named her ''GB No.41'', and then renamed her HMS ''Rattler''. The Navy sold her in 1802. She returned to the name ''Hope'' and became a merchantman trading with Hamburg, Gibraltar, and lastly, Cowes. She was last listed in 1816. * was a wood screw sloop launched in 1843. It had been planned to name her HMS ''Ardent'', but this was dropped in 1842. She was broken up in 1856. * was a wood screw sloop launched in 1862 and wrecked in 1868. * was a composite screw gunboat launched in 1886. She was used for harbour service from 1910, and as a training ship from 1919, when she was renamed HMS ''Dryad''. She was sold in 1924. * was an launched in 1942 and was renamed HMS ''Loyalty'' in 1943; a German submarine sank her in 1944.

See also