HMS Crocus (1808)
| History | |
|---|---|
 UK
|
|
| Name: | HMS Crocus |
| Ordered: | 30 March 1807 |
| Builder: | Plymouth Dockyard (M/s Joseph Tucker) |
| Laid down: | November 1807 |
| Launched: | 10 June 1808 |
| Fate: | Sold 1815 |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | Crocus-class |
| Type: | Brig-sloop |
| Tons burthen: | 255 62⁄94 (bm) |
| Length: |
|
| Beam: | 25 ft 7 in (7.8 m) |
| Depth of hold: | 12 ft 8 in (3.9 m) |
| Sail plan: | Brig rigged |
| Complement: | 86 |
| Armament: |
|
HMS Crocus was the nameship of the Crocus-class brig-sloops of the Royal Navy. She was launched in 1808 and had an almost completely uneventful career until she was sold in 1815.
Commander Robert Merrick Fowler commissioned Crocus in August for the North Sea.
On 19 February 1809, Crocus, Trompeuse and the brig-sloop Rolla were in company when Rolla recaptured the American ship Factor.Factor, of New York, Johnstone, master, had been sailing from Tenerife when the privateer captured her the day before between Beachy Head and Dungeness. The British sent her into Dover. The same privateer had also captured a brig, which the excise cutter Lively had recaptured and sent into the Downs.
Crocus participated in the ill-fated Walcheren Campaign. Starting on 30 July 1809, a British armed force of 39,000 men landed on Walcheren. However, the French fleet had left Flushing (Vlissingen) and sailed to Antwerp, and the British lost over 4,000 men to "Walcheren Fever", a combination of malaria and typhus, and to enemy action. As the strategic reasons for the campaign dissipated and conditions worsened, the British force withdrew in December. Prize money arising from the net proceeds of the property captured at Walcheren and the adjacent islands in the Scheld was paid in October 1812.
Fowler transferred to Charybdis on 18 September 1809. Commander the Honourable William Walpole recommissioned Crocus in October. She then cruised the Channel. Three months later Commander Richard Buck replaced him. Buck sailed her for the Mediterranean on 19 December.
On 19 January 1810, Crocus recaptured the Selberen. By 11 June Crocus was back in Britain as on the 11th a midshipman from Crocus underwent court martial on board Salvador del Mundo in the Hamoaze. The charge was that he had deserted while Crocus was off Land's End when he had been sent with a boat's crew to retrieve sand for scrubbing the deck. The court sentenced him to two years' imprisonment in the Marshalsea, to be mulct of all his pay, to be declared unworthy and incapable of ever serving as an officer in his Majesty's navy and, at the expiration of his imprisonment, to serve before the mast. The court ordered a seaman who had also seized the same opportunity to desert to 200 lashes. The seaman had made mutinous statements to the purser and First Lieutenant on Crocus when they caught him.
...
Wikipedia