HMS Porcupine (1807)
| History | |
|---|---|
 United Kingdom
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| Name: | HMS Porcupine |
| Ordered: | 30 January 1805 |
| Builder: | Thomas Owen, Topsham, Exeter |
| Laid down: | September 1805 |
| Launched: | 26 January 1807 |
| Completed: | 22 June 1807 at Plymouth Dockyard |
| Commissioned: | March 1807 |
| Out of service: | Sold 18 April 1816 |
| Honours and awards: |
Naval General Service Medal with clasp "10 July Boat Service 1808" |
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| Acquired: | April 1818 by purchase |
| Renamed: | Windsor Castle |
| Fate: | Sold 1826 for breaking up |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | Banterer-class post ship |
| Tons burthen: | 559 68⁄94, or 538, or 560 (bm) |
| Length: |
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| Beam: | 32 ft 0 1⁄4 in (9.8 m) |
| Depth of hold: | 10 ft 6 in (3.20 m) |
| Sail plan: | Full-rigged ship |
| Complement: | 155 (later 175) |
| Armament: |
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HMS Porcupine was a Royal Navy Banterer-class post ship of 24 guns,launched in 1807. She served extensively and relatively independently in the Adriatic and the Western Mediterranean during the Napoleonic Wars, with her boats performing many cutting out expeditions, one of which earned for her crew the Naval General Service Medal. She was sold for breaking up in 1816 but instead became the mercantile Windsor Castle. She was finally sold for breaking up in 1826 at Mauritius.
Porcupine was rated a 24-gun ship and the original plan was that she would mount that number of long 9-pounders on her main deck plus two 6-pounder guns on her forecastle. She also carried ten 24-pounder carronades on her quarter-deck and forecastle. By the time that Captain the Honorable Henry Duncan commissioned her in March 1807, the Admiralty had added two brass howitzers to her armament, while exchanging her 9-pounders for 32-pounder carronades. Her complement was increased by twenty to 175 officers, men and boys.
Porcupine entered service in March 1807, operating in the Mediterranean Fleet during the Napoleonic Wars under the command of Captain Henry Duncan. Detached to serve on independent command in the Adriatic Campaign, Porcupine fought numerous minor actions with shore batteries and coastal merchant ships.
On 23 September 1807, she captured the Fortuna. Then on 7 October Porcupine chased a trabaccolo into the harbour of Zupaino on Šipan (Giuppana), the largest of the Elaphiti Islands. That evening Duncan sent his boats, under the command of Lieutenant George Price, with Lieutenant Francis Smith, into the harbour where they captured and brought out the trabaccolo, which was the Venetian gunboat Safo. She was armed with a 24-pounder gun and some swivel guns, and had a crew of some 50 men, all under the command of enseigne de vaisseau Anthonio Ghega. She was well moored to the shore and was expecting an attack. Even so, once the British arrived, most of the crew jumped overboard. Safo belonged to a division of gunboats deployed to protect the coast and had been sent out from Ragusa (Dubrovnik) three days earlier. Also, before entering the harbour, the British captured a guard boat with one 4-pounder swivel gun. Despite the resistance, the Porcupine had only two men wounded.
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Wikipedia