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 borne the name HMS ''Wolf'' or HMS ''Woolf'', after the mammal the

wolf The wolf (''Canis lupus''; : wolves), also known as the gray wolf or grey wolf, is a large canine native to Eurasia and North America. More than thirty subspecies of ''Canis lupus'' have been recognized, and gray wolves, as popularly u ...

: * was a 16-gun ship, previously the Spanish ''Lobos''. She was captured in 1656 and sold in 1663. * was an 8-gun

fireship A fire ship or fireship, used in the days of wooden rowed or sailing ships, was a ship filled with combustibles, or gunpowder deliberately set on fire and steered (or, when possible, allowed to drift) into an enemy fleet, in order to destroy sh ...

launched in 1690 and expended in 1692, destroying the French * was a 2-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 1699. She was captured by the French in 1704 but was recovered in 1708 and sold in 1712. * was a 14-gun sloop launched in 1731 and wrecked in 1741. * was a 14-gun sloop launched in 1742, captured by the French in 1745, recaptured in 1747 and wrecked in 1748. * was a 10-gun sloop launched in 1754 and sold in 1781. * was an 8-gun armed ship of unknown origin, wrecked in 1780. * was a 4-gun gunvessel, originally 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 was broken up in 1803. *HMS ''Wolf'' was a 16-gun sloop, originally the 18-gun French privateer . captured her in 1798 and the Royal Navy commissioned ''Eugénie'' as HMS ''Pandour''. She was renamed HMS ''Wolf'' in 1800 and broken up in 1802. * was a cutter tender launched in 1801 and broken up in 1829. * was a 16-gun launched at Dartmouth in 1804. She captured or destroyed four small Spanish or French privateers before she was wrecked on 4 September 1806, with no loss of life, about 1.5 miles off shore on the southwest point of Heneaga in the Bahamas. The loss was blamed on a northward current and inaccurate charts. *HMS ''Wolf'' was the French 16-gun brig-sloop ''Diligent'', which captured in 1806. The Royal Navy commissioned her as . She was renamed HMS ''Prudente'' later that year and HMS ''Wolf'' in 1807. She was broken up in 1811. * was a 14-gun brig-sloop launched in 1814 and sold as a

training ship A training ship is a ship used to train students as sailors. The term is mostly used to describe ships employed by navies to train future officers. Essentially there are two types: those used for training at sea and old hulks used to house classr ...

in 1825. * was an 18-gun sloop launched in 1826, hulked in 1848, used as a coal hulk from 1859 and broken up by 1878. * 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 and broken up by 1864. * was an launched in 1897, reclassified as a destroyer in 1913 and sold in 1921.

References

* * Fonds Marine. Campagnes (opérations; divisions et stations navales; missions diverses). Inventaire de la sous-série Marine BB4. Tome premier : BB4 210 à 482 (1805-1826

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See also

References