HMS Eling (1798)

Plans for HMS Eling, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London
History
UK
Name:	HMS Eling
Builder:	Hobbs & Hellyer, Redbridge
Laid down:	1796
Acquired:	1798 by purchase
Honours and awards:	Naval General Service Medal with clasp "Copenhagen 1801"
Fate:	Broken up 1814
General characteristics
Type:	Experimental design
Tonnage:	148 (bm)
Length:	80 ft 0 in (24.4 m) (overall) 56 ft 7 1⁄2 in (17.3 m) (keel)
Beam:	22 ft 2 in (6.8 m)
Depth of hold:	11 ft 6 in (3.5 m)
Sail plan:	Schooner
Complement:	50
Armament:	12 x 18-pounder carronades + 2 x 12-pounder carronades

HMS Eling was one of six vessels built to an experimental design by Sir Samuel Bentham. It is not known when she was launched, though it may have been in 1796. After the Admiralty purchased her in 1798 for the Royal Navy she took part in several campaigns and captured a privateer and other vessels. She was broken up in 1814 after several years in ordinary.

Hobbs & Hellyer built six vessels to Bentham's design. Eling was the name ship of a two-vessel class of schooners, and she and her class mate Redbridge were the smallest of the six vessels, smaller even than the other two schooners, Milbrook and Netley. The design featured a large-breadth to length ratio with structural bulkheads, and sliding keels. The vessels were also virtually double-ended.

Lieutenant William Peake commissioned her in July 1798. Under his command, Eling took part in the Anglo-Russian Invasion of Holland in 1799. On 28 August 1799, the fleet captured several Dutch hulks and ships in the New Diep, in Holland. Eling was not listed among the vessels qualifying to share in the prize money. However, Eling was present at the subsequent Vlieter Incident on 30 August. In discussing the utility of the "non-recoil principle" of fixing carronades to the deck, James mentions that during the Vlieter Incident Eling fired some 400 shots from her aftermost carronade without sustaining the slightest damage to even a pane of glass in the cabin skylight, or injury to anyone.

On 12 March 1801 Eling sailed with the British fleet under Admiral Sir Hyde Parker and was at the Battle of Copenhagen (1801). She shared in the head money for the battle, but was not listed among the vessels whose crews qualified for the clasp "Copenhagen 1801" to the Naval General Service Medal that the Admiralty issued in 1847. This is strange as prior to the battle she participated in taking soundings of the Hollander Deep, and after the battle Captain Robert Otway boarded Eling to sail to HDMS Holsteen to arrange her surrender. Though Eling does not appear on the list, members of her crew are known to have received the medal. Then on 8 June a midshipman and some crew members of Eling on shore in Copenhagen got involved in some altercation, but although it resulted in an exchange of letters between the Danish Adjutant General and Admiral Lord Nelson, nothing more seems to have come of this.