HCS Mahi (1834)

HCS Mahi (or Mahé) was a schooner that the Bombay Dockyard launched in 1834 for the British East India Company (EIC).[3]

History
East India Company
NameHCS Mahi
BuilderBombay Dockyard
Launched27 March 1834
General characteristics
Typeschooner
Tons burthen157[1] (bm)
Crew50
Armament
  • 1834:1 × 32-pounder gun on a pivot mount + 2 × 12-pounder howitzers[2]
  • Later:1 × 32-pounder gun on a pivot mount + 4 × 12-pounder carronades.

Mahi participated in the 1839 Aden Expedition along with the frigate HMS Volage, the sloop HCS Coote, and the brig HMS Cruizer.[4] The British attack began on 19 February and Mahé, under the command of Lieutenant Daniels, provided fire support. She sustained the only naval casualty of the expedition when Midshipman Nesbitt sustained a wound.[5]

On 7 April 1855 Mahi, Lieutenant W.S. King, IN, commanding, delivered to Berbera Sir Richard F. Burton and his expedition to discover the source of the Nile. An attack by Somali warriors outside Berbera wounded Burton, killed one of the British officers on the expedition, and forced the cancellation of the expedition.[6] (King died at sea on 24 November 1855.)

On 27 June 1856 Mahi, Lieutenant Walker, commanding, was at Massawa, investigating the slave trade across the Red Sea to Jeddah, Hodeida, etc.

On 13 January 1857 Mahi took a party of sappers and miners to Perim to establish a British military outpost there. The move was to forestall the French navy brig Nissus from claiming the island for France.

Fate

After her release from official service, Mahé became a country ship trading on the Malabar Coast. She was still trading in 1870.[7]

Note

Charles Rathbone Low, the author of the history in the references below, was a midshipman on Mahi in 1855.[8]

Citations
  1. Low (1877), p. 14.
  2. Low (1877), p. 95.
  3. Hackman (2001), p. 334.
  4. Clowes, pg. 277-279.
  5. "No. 19719". The London Gazette. 26 March 1839. pp. 669–671.
  6. Burton (1856), pp. 449–458.
  7. Low (1877), p. 572.
  8. Low (1877), p. 582.

References
  • Burton, Richard (1856). First Footsteps in East Africa (1st ed.). Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans. pp. 449–458.
  • Clowes, William (1901). The Royal Navy: A history from the earlierst times to the present Volume VI. London, England: William Clowes & Sons
  • Hackman, Rowan (2001). Ships of the East India Company. Gravesend, Kent: World Ship Society. ISBN 0-905617-96-7.
  • Low, Charles Rathbone (1877). History of the Indian Navy: (1613-1863). R. Bentley and son.
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