HMS Calypso (1883)
HMS Calypso
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| History | |
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 United Kingdom
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| Name: | HMS Calpyso |
| Builder: | HM Dockyard Chatham |
| Cost: | Hull: £82,000; machinery: £37,500 |
| Laid down: | 1881 |
| Launched: | 7 June 1883 |
| Commissioned: | 21 September 1885 (first commission) |
| Renamed: | HMS Briton, 15 February 1916 |
| Reclassified: | Training ship, 2 September 1902 |
| Fate: | Sold 7 April 1922; burned off Jobs Cove near Embree, NL |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | Calypso-class corvette |
| Displacement: | 2,770 long tons |
| Length: | 235 ft (71.6 m) pp |
| Beam: | 44 ft 6 in (13.6 m) |
| Draught: | 19 ft 11 in (6.1 m) |
| Installed power: |
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| Propulsion: | 4-cylinder J. and G. Rennie compound-expansion steam engine driving a single screw |
| Sail plan: | Barque rig |
| Speed: | 13.75 kn (25.5 km/h) powered; 14.75 kn (27.3 km/h) forced draught |
| Armament: |
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| Armour: | Deck: 1.5 in (38 mm) over machinery |
HMS Calypso was a corvette (designated as a third-class cruiser from 1887) of the Royal Navy and the name ship of her class. Built for distant cruising in the heyday of the British Empire, she served as a warship and training vessel until 1922, when she was sold.
As originally classified as a screw corvette,Calypso was one of the Royal Navy’s last sailing corvettes. She supplemented her extensive sail rig with a powerful engine. Among the first of the smaller cruisers to be given steel hulls, instead of iron, she nevertheless was cased with timber and coppered below the water line, as were wooden ships.
Unlike her more famous sister Calliope, Calypso had a quiet career, consisting mainly of training cruises in the Atlantic Ocean. In 1902 she was sent to the colony of Newfoundland, where she served as a training vessel for the Newfoundland Royal Naval Reserve before and during the First World War. In 1922 she was declared surplus and sold, then used as a storage hulk. Her hull still exists, awash in a coastal bay off Newfoundland.
Calypso and Calliope made up the Calypso class of corvettes, designed by Nathaniel Barnaby. Part of a long line of cruiser classes built for protecting trade routes and colonial police work, they were the last two sailing corvettes built for the Royal Navy. Corvettes had been built of iron since the Volage class of 1867, but the Calypsos and the preceding Comus class were instead built of steel. Corvettes were designed to operate across the vast distances of Britain's maritime empire, and could not rely on dry docks for maintenance. Since iron (and steel) hulls were subject to biofouling, and they could not easily be cleaned, the established practice of copper sheathing was extended to protect them; the metal plating of the hull was timber-cased and coppered below the waterline.
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