Nine 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 ''Zephyr'' after

Zephyrus In ancient Greek religion and myth, the Anemoi (Greek: , 'Winds') were wind gods who were each ascribed a cardinal direction from which their respective winds came (see Classical compass winds), and were each associated with various seasons and ...

, the Greek god of the west wind: * HMS ''Zephyr'', originally the sloop HMS ''Merlin'', was captured by a French privateer in 1757. The British recaptured her in 1757 and the Royal Navy took her into service as ''Zephyr''. The French frigate ''Gracieuse'' recaptured her in August 1778; she was disarmed and sold at Toulon in January 1780 for Lt44,200. The purchasers turned her into a privateer, which the British privateer ''Fame'' captured and burnt on 26 August 1780.Hepper (1994), p.53. * , launched in 1779, was a 14-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 ...

. She was renamed ''Navy Transport'' in 1782, and then ''Dispatch'' in 1783 before being sold in 1798. * , launched in 1795, was a 10-gun fireship. She was sold in 1808. * , launched in 1809, was a 16-gun brig-sloop. She was sold in 1818 for breaking up. * , launched in 1823, was a 6-gun packet-brig. She immediately became a Falmouth

packet Packet may refer to: * A small container or pouch ** Packet (container), a small single use container ** Cigarette packet ** Sugar packet * Network packet, a formatted unit of data carried by a packet-mode computer network * Packet radio, a form ...

. She was sold in 1836. * , transferred into service in 1837, was a 3-gun wooden paddle picket. She was sold in 1865 for breaking up. * , launched in 1873, was a 4-gun composite screw gunboat. She was sold in 1889 to become a salvage vessel. She was broken up in 1929. * , launched in 1895, was a

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 ...

. She was sold in 1920. * , launched in 1943, was a Z-class

. She was broken up in 1958.

Battle honours

* Quebec 1759 * Martinique 1762 * Copenhagen 1801 * Baltic 1854 * Arctic 1945

Citations

References

* *Demerliac, Alain (1996) ''La Marine De Louis XVI: Nomenclature Des Navires Français De 1774 À 1792''. (Nice: Éditions OMEGA). {{DEFAULTSORT:Zephyr, Hms Royal Navy ship names