HMS Salsette (1805)
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| History | |
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 UK
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| Name: | HMS Salsette |
| Ordered: | 12 May 1802 |
| Builder: | Bombay Dockyard, M/Shipwright Jamsetjee Bomanjee |
| Laid down: | 19 July 1803 |
| Launched: | 17 January 1805 |
| Fate: | Broken up 20 March 1874 |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | Perseverance-class fifth-rate frigate |
| Tonnage: | 901 82⁄94 (bm) |
| Length: |
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| Beam: | 38 ft 9 in (11.8 m) |
| Depth of hold: | 13 ft 7 in (4.1 m) |
| Propulsion: | Sails |
| Complement: | 260 |
| Armament: |
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HMS Salsette (or Salcette) was a Perseverance-class fifth-rate frigate of a nominal 36 guns, launched in 1805. The East India Company built her for the Royal Navy at the Company's dockyards in Bombay. She was the Navy's first teak-built ship.
She served in the Indies, the Baltic, the Mediterranean and the Home Station, taking several prizes and seeing a limited amount of action. She did participate in a single-ship action in the Baltic that was notable for the other, much smaller, vessel's heroism. Salsette was laid up after the end of the Napoleonic Wars but then went on to serve in a number of support functions until the Admiralty had her broken up in 1874.
Built and launched as HMS Pitt, she was renamed to Salsette on 19 February 1807. She is not to be confused with her sister ship Doris, which was named Salsette prior to her acquisition by the Royal Navy, which renamed her Pitt. This Pitt became Doris on 26 October 1807. For a while the Navy had two frigates with the same name.
Salsette received her name from Salsette Island in Maharashtra state on India's west coast. The metropolis of Bombay and the city of Thane lie on this island.
Salsette was the first vessel the Bombay Dockyard built for the Royal Navy. As such, there were apparently many defects in her construction, which led the Navy to demand that the dockyard stick more closely to the design plans in the future.
In 1805 the Royal Navy commissioned Salsette (as Pitt) at Bombay under Captain Walter Bathurst for the East Indies and she participated in the blockade of Mauritius in 1805-6.
On 20 or 26 January Salsette chased a French prize and suffered one man killed and extensive damage to her hull by cannon fire from a fort on Pointe aux Cannoniere.
In 1806 she came under the command of Captain James G. Vashon. In February 1807 Captain George Waldegrave assumed command. Salsette left Madras on 29 September 1807 and arrived in Portsmouth in early 1808, having brought with her Lord William Bentinck, the late governor of Madras. At Portsmouth she underwent repairs from January 1808 to 17 March and then sailed to the Baltic.
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Wikipedia