Ten 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 ''Serpent'', after the synonym for

snake Snakes are elongated, Limbless vertebrate, limbless, carnivore, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes . Like all other Squamata, squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping Scale (zoology), scales. Ma ...

, whilst another two were planned, and one appears to have been a spurious report: * was a 60-ton

pinnace Pinnace may refer to: * Pinnace (ship's boat), a small vessel used as a tender to larger vessels among other things * Full-rigged pinnace The full-rigged pinnace was the larger of two types of vessel called a pinnace in use from the sixteenth ...

captured in 1562 and last recorded in 1653. * was a 12-gun

bomb vessel A bomb vessel, bomb ship, bomb ketch, or simply bomb was a type of wooden sailing naval ship. Its primary armament was not cannons ( long guns or carronades) – although bomb vessels carried a few cannons for self-defence – but mortars mounte ...

launched in 1693 and wrecked in 1694. She ran aground in Gibraltar Bay during a storm and was wrecked; 15 men died. * was a 4-gun bomb vessel launched in 1695 and captured by a French

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 ...

in 1703. * was a bomb vessel (carrying 2 mortars and 8 guns) launched in 1742 and wrecked in 1748. She was Heading for Barbados when she ran aground on the island. Despite efforts to lighten her, her crew had to abandon her and were ferried ashore over a three-day period; seven drowned when their boat overturned. The loss was blamed on strong currents. * HMS ''Serpent'' was a 12-gun bomb vessel reported as being built in 1771, but no such vessel was built. * HMS ''Serpent'' was to have been a 16-gun ship-

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 ...

. She was laid down in February 1783 and cancelled in October of that year when the builder (Phineas Jacobs of Sandgate) went out of business. * was a 16-gun ship-sloop launched in 1789 that foundered in September 1806 on the

Jamaica station Jamaica station is a major train station of the Long Island Rail Road located in Jamaica, Queens, New York City. With weekday ridership exceeding 200,000 passengers, it is the largest transit hub on Long Island, the fourth-busiest rail station ...

. * HMS ''Serpent'' (1793) was a French gun-boat taken at Toulon in 1793, and in September commissioned and given a crew of 26 men from under the command of Lieutenant John Davie; the British scuttled her at the evacuation of the city on 18 December. * was a 4-gun gun vessel, formerly a 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 tw ...

purchased in 1794. She paid off in 1796 and is believed to have been sold around 1802. * HMS ''Serpent'' was to have been an 18-gun sloop, laid down in 1810 and cancelled later that year. * was a 16-gun

brig-sloop In the 18th century and most of the 19th, a sloop-of-war in the Royal Navy was a warship with a single gun deck that carried up to eighteen guns. The rating system covered all vessels with 20 guns and above; thus, the term ''sloop-of-war'' enc ...

launched in 1832. She was used as a target from 1857 and was broken up in 1861. * was a wood screw

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 ...

launched in 1860 and sold in 1875. Surveyed

Pratas Island Pratas Island,, United States National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency also known as the Tungsha Islands or the Dongsha Islands (), is a coral island situated in the northern part of the South China Sea administered as part of Cijin District, Kao ...

in 1867. * was a

torpedo cruiser A torpedo cruiser is a type of warship that is armed primarily with torpedoes. The major navies began building torpedo cruisers shortly after the invention of the locomotive Whitehead torpedo in the 1860s. The development of the torpedo gave rise ...

launched in 1887 and wrecked in November 1890 near

Camariñas Camariñas is a municipality in the province of A Coruña in the autonomous community of Galicia in northwestern Spain. It belongs to the comarca of Terra de Soneira. An important fishing center, it is renowned all over Spain by the bobbin lace wo ...

with the loss of 173 of her crew of 176 men. The cause was an error in judgment on the part of those responsible for the ship's navigation. Still, her officers and men obeyed orders and maintained good discipline to the end, with her officers obeying the Captain's orders to "stand by the ship", and going down with her.Agnes Weston: My Life among the Bluejackets, James Nisbett: London, 1909. Page 163

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* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Serpent Royal Navy ship names