HMS Fly (1804)

HMS Fly was launched in March 1804. She was wrecked in March 1805.

For other ships with the same name, see HMS Fly.

History
United Kingdom
NameHMS Fly
Ordered27 February 1802
BuilderGeorge Parsons, Burseldon
Laid downMay 1803
Launched26 March 1803
FateWrecked 8 March 1805
General characteristics [1]
Class and typeMerlin-class ship-sloop
Tons burthen36913⁄94 (bm)
Length
  • Overall:106 ft 0 in (32.3 m)
  • Keel:87 ft 5+3⁄4 in (26.7 m)
Beam28 ft 2 in (8.6 m)
Depth of hold13 ft 9 in (4.2 m)
Complement121
Armament
  • Upper deck: 16 × 32-pounder carronades
  • QD: 6 × 12-pounder carronades
  • Fc: 2 × 12-pounder guns

Career and loss

Commander Robert O'Brien commissioned her. Commander the Honourable Pownoll Bastard Pellew replaced him in May, and sailed Fly to Jamaica.[1]

Fly was escorting a convoy of eight merchantmen when just before midnight on 7 March 1805 she struck a reef. Two of the vessels she was escorting also struck. Morning revealed that the vessels were close to the Florida shore, five miles south of Key Largo. Despite attempts to lighten Fly by cutting her masts and jettisoning her guns and shot, she was taking on water as the waves pounded her, weakening her beams. In the evening of 8 March her crew abandoned her; the other vessels of the convoy took them off. Several wrecking vessels arrived with the intention of salvaging whatever they could. The court martial found that the chart Pellew was using contained a major error.[2][lower-alpha 1]

Lloyd's List reported that Fly and her convoy were coming from Honduras, and that the two merchantmen were Concord, Davis, master, and Rattler, Belmont, master.[4][lower-alpha 2]

Notes
  1. Grocott gives the date of the wrecking as 2 March, and that of the court martial as 17 April.[3]
  2. Concord, Davis, master, was an American ship that Fly had detained.[4] Ratler, Balmond, master, of 287 tons (bm), had been launched in the United States in 1797.[5]

Comments
  1. Winfield (2008), p. 259.
  2. Hepper (1994), p. 110.
  3. Grocott (1997), p. 195.
  4. "The Marine List". Lloyd's List. No. 4213. 3 May 1805. hdl:2027/uc1.c2735022.
  5. Register of Shipping (1805), Seq.No.R63.

References
  • Grocott, Terence (1997), Shipwrecks of the revolutionary and Napoleonic eras, Chatham, ISBN 1-86176-030-2
  • Hepper, David J. (1994). British Warship Losses in the Age of Sail, 1650-1859. Rotherfield: Jean Boudriot. ISBN 0-948864-30-3. OCLC 622348295.
  • Winfield, Rif (2008). British Warships in the Age of Sail 1793–1817: Design, Construction, Careers and Fates (2nd ed.). Seaforth Publishing. ISBN 978-1-86176-246-7.
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