HMS Encounter (1846)
_at_Ningpo_in_1862.jpg)
HMS Encounter at Ningpo in China in 1862
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| History | |
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 United Kingdom
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| Name: | HMS Encounter |
| Ordered: | 5 February 1845 |
| Builder: | Pembroke Dockyard |
| Cost: | £19,734 plus £20,192 for machinery and fitting |
| Laid down: | June 1845 |
| Launched: | 5 September 1846 |
| Commissioned: | 12 October 1849 |
| Honours and awards: |
"China 1856–60" |
| Fate: | Broken up May 1866 |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | Encounter-class sloop (reclassified as a corvette in 1862) |
| Tons burthen: | 894 40/94 bm |
| Length: | 180 ft (54.9 m) |
| Beam: | 33 ft 2 in (10.1 m) |
| Depth of hold: | 20 ft 10 in (6.4 m) |
| Installed power: |
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| Propulsion: |
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| Sail plan: | Full-rigged ship |
| Speed: | 10.2 knots (18.9 km/h) |
| Complement: | 180 |
| Armament: |
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HMS Encounter was an early wooden screw sloop of the Royal Navy. She was ordered as one of a pair of Encounter-class sloops in 1845, but her sister-ship, Harrier, was suspended six months after the order, and cancelled in 1851. Encounter had her armament radically altered in 1850 and she was broken up at Devonport in 1866.
Encounter was designed by the master shipwright of Portsmouth Dockyard, John Fincham, in 1844 and was ordered from Pembroke Dockyard on 5 February 1845. Harrier, a second vessel to the same design, was ordered on 26 March 1846 but was suspended in September the same year and cancelled in 1851.
Built with a traditional wooden construction, Encounter was lengthened at Deptford Dockyard before commissioning. She was fitted with a John Penn and Sons 2-cylinder horizontal single-expansion trunk steam engine driving a single screw. Her engine was rated at 360 nominal horsepower and developed 673 indicated horsepower (502 kW), giving a maximum speed of 10.2 knots (18.9 km/h). She was equipped with a full sailing rig.
She was armed with one 56-pounder (87cwt) gun, one 10-inch (85cwt) gun, four 8-inch/68-pounder (65cwt) guns and two 32-pounder (17cwt) carronades. By 1850 these had been changed for a homogeneous armament of twelve 32-pounder muzzle-loading smoothbore guns, and another pair of weapons were added in 1856.
Encounter commissioned for the first time at Portsmouth on 12 October 1849.
The Royal Navy ran a series of "Experimental Squadrons" during the 1830, and 1840s, with Encounter taking part in the 1851 event. The intention was to trial different types of vessel in a variety of sea and wind conditions, with the aim of building experience of the comparative characteristics of new ships.
The port line of the 1853 Naval Review was led by the brand new 91-gun ship-of-the line Agamemnon (flying the flag of Rear Admiral Armar Lowry-Corry), with Encounter taking seventh place. Queen Victoria, embarked in the yacht Fairy, inspected the ships as she passed between the port and starboard lines on the afternoon of 10 August 1853 on her way to Osborne House on the Isle of Wight.
Deployed to Chinese waters, Encounter took part in April 1854 in joint British-American operations against Chinese imperial troops in Shanghai with HMS Grecian and USS Plymouth. Imperial Chinese troops had begun assaulting foreigners, sacking warehouses and exacting tolls on boats sailing up and down the Huangpu River. On 3 April two British citizens were accosted by sword-wielding soldiers, and the British and US ships resolved to drive off the Chinese troops. Sixty US sailors and marines and 30 sailors from American merchant ships moved against the left flank of the Chinese entrenchments, while a force of 150 British sailors and marines, and additional "Shanghai volunteers," attacked on the right. Supported by gunfire from two privately owned field pieces and a howitzer, the Allied force routed the Chinese defenders, who "fled in great disorder, leaving behind them a number of wounded and dead."
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Wikipedia