Six ships (and one
shore establishment
A stone frigate is a naval establishment on land.
"Stone frigate" is an informal term that has its origin in Britain's Royal Navy after its use of Diamond Rock, an island off Martinique, as a 'sloop of war' to harass the First French Empire, ...
) 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 ''Sphinx'' or HMS ''Sphynx'', after the mythical creature, the
Sphinx
A sphinx ( , grc, σφίγξ , Boeotian: , plural sphinxes or sphinges) is a mythical creature with the head of a human, the body of a lion, and the wings of a falcon.
In Greek tradition, the sphinx has the head of a woman, the haunches of ...
:
* 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 1748 and sold in 1770.
* was a 20-gun sixth rate launched in 1775. The French captured her in September 1779, but recaptured her on 29 November 1779. She was broken up in 1811.
* was a 10-gun launched in 1815 that became a
Post Office Packet Service
The Post Office Packet Service dates to Tudor times and ran until 1823, when the Admiralty assumed control of the service. Originally, the Post Office used packet ships to carry mail packets to and from British embassies, colonies and outposts. Th ...
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 ...
, sailing out of
Falmouth, Cornwall
Falmouth ( ; kw, Aberfala) is a town, civil parish and port on the River Fal on the south coast of Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It has a total resident population of 21,797 (2011 census).
Etymology
The name Falmouth is of English or ...
. She was sold in 1835.
* was a wooden paddle
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 1846 and broken up in 1881.
*HMS Sphinx (1882) was a composite paddle vessel launched in 1882 and sold in 1919.
* was an launched in 1939 that foundered in 1940 after an air attack.
* HMS ''Sphinx'' was the name given to a naval accommodation camp in Alexandria, Egypt, from April 1941.
Citations
References
*Demerliac, Alain (1996) ''La Marine De Louis XVI: Nomenclature Des Navires Français De 1774 À 1792''. (Nice: Éditions OMEGA).
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sphinx, Hms
Royal Navy ship names