HMS Wellesley (1815)
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Wellesley sailing along a rocky coastline
HMS Wellesley was a Black Prince Class 74 gun third rate ship of the line which should have been built on Seppings’ principle of cross bracing, however, the plans were lost with the capture of HMS Java in 1812 and she followed more closely the lines of Cornwallis. She was built by the East India Company at Bombay Dockyard. Ordered on the 6th of January, 1812, and laid down in the May of 1813, she was named after the Duke of Wellington, and launched on the 24th of February, 1815. Completion took place in the February of 1825 at Portsmouth.
History GREAT BRITAIN Name: HMS Wellesley Ordered: 3 September 1812 Builder: Bombay Dockyard Laid down: May 1813 Launched: 24 February 1815 Renamed: TS Cornwall, 1868 Honours and
awards:China 1840–42 Fate: Sunk by bombing, 1940, raised and broken up 1948
General characteristicsClass and type: Black Prince Class, altered to Armada Class in building Tons burthen: 1745 75⁄94 (bm) Length: 175 ft 10 3⁄4 in (53.6 m) Beam: 47 ft 7 in (14.5 m) Depth of hold: 21 ft 0in (6.4 m) Sail plan: Full rigged ship Armament:
- Gundeck: 28 × 32-pounder guns
- Upper gundeck: 28 × 18-pounder guns
- QD: 4 × 12-pounder guns + 10 × 32-pounder Carronades
- Fc: 2 × 12-pounder guns + 2 × 32-pounder Carronades
- Poop deck: 6 × 18-pounder Carronades
Service.
HMS Wellesley was commissioned under Captain John Harper for the voyage to England in the June of 1815. She arrived at Portsmouth on the 3rd of May 1816 and was laid up until 1823.
In 1823 Wellesley carried Sir Charles Stuart de Rothesay on a mission to Portugal and Brazil to negotiate a commercial treaty with Pedro the first of Brazil. On the 23rd of November,1824, Wellesley was driven ashore at Portsmouth during a gale. Between 25 November 1824 and 30 January 1825, her tender, Wolf, took several prizes, for which prize money was payable.
Wellesley was the flagship of Rear admiral Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland in the Med between 1827 and 1830. She went into Plymouth for a small repair costing £ 25.119 between the February of 1835 and 1837. On the 19th of June in that year Captain Thomas Maitland assumed the command of Wellesley, which became the flagship of Rear-Admiral Frederick Lewis Maitland.
On 2nd and 3rd of February, 1839 Wellesley, HMS Algerine and troops captured Karachi. Wellesley sailed into the harbour and proceeded to fire at the mud fort on Manora Island, subduing the fortifications in rapid order. The purpose of the unprovoked attack was to convince the local rulers to sign a new treaty with the Honourable East India Company.
In the March of that year relations between Persia and Britain broke down and came to a confrontation over a series of British demands, including that the Shah of Persia grant the British permission to establish a permanent base on Kharg Island, which they had already unilaterally occupied. This resulted in a series of attacks on the British Residency in Bushire and led to the dispatch of Wellesley and Algerine to the area. The outcome of the situation was the Anglo-Persian Treaty, signed on the 28th of October, 1841, which recognised a mutual freedom to trade in the territory of the other and for the British to establish consulates in Tehran and Tabriz.
Admiral Maitland died on 30 November whilst at sea on board Wellesley, off Bombay and was superseded by Commodore Sir James Bremer.
The First Opium War.
Wellesley saw active service in the Far East during the First Opium War. Led by Commodore Sir James Bremer in Wellesley, a British expedition took Chusan in the July of 1840 after an exchange of gunfire with shore batteries which caused only minor casualties to the British. When Wellesley returned from the conflict, 27 cannonballs were found embedded in the sides of the ship.
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Wellesley, second from the left, in the second capture of Chusan on the 1st of October, 1841.
On 7th of January, 1841 she participated in the Second battle of Chuenpi and the bombardment of fortifications at Tycocktow. Both Chuenpi and Tycocktow guarded the seaward approaches to Canton on the Bocca Tigris (Bogue). This campaign resulted in the British taking possession of Hong Kong Island on the 26th of February in that year.
On that same day, Wellesley participated in the Battle of the Bogue, which involved bombardments, landings, capture and destruction of nearly all the Chinese forts and fortifications on both sides of the Bocca Tigris as far up river as Canton. Next day, seamen and Royal Marines of the naval squadron attacked and captured the fort, camp and guns at a Chinese position during the Battle of First Bar. The squadron also destroyed the Chinese Admiral's vessel Cambridge, formerly a 34-gun East Indiaman.
Between the 23rd and the 30th of May in that same year, she participated in joint operations that led to the capture of Canton itself, and subsequent payment by the Chinese of a six million dollar reparations payment imposed on them. Rear-Admiral Sir William Parker replaced Commodore Sir James Bremer as commander-in-chief of the squadron in China on the 10th of August.
On the 26th of August, Wellesley participated in the destruction of batteries and defences surrounding Amoy. At one point Captain Maitland placed the Wellesley within 400 yards of the principal battery. This action included the temporary occupation of that town and island, along with its key defensive positions on the Island of Koo-Lang-Soo, which were garrisoned. Finally, on the 1st of October, the British, who had withdrawn in February, reoccupied Chusan and the city of Tinghae. The British proceeded to Amoy, Ningpo, Woosung and Shanghai, ending with the seizure of Chinkiang and closing the entrance to the Grand Canal on the 21st of July, 1842.
Meantime Wellesley had made the voyage home to England and was laid up at Plymouth In that same July as the British were victorious at Chinkiang.
For his services during the war, Captain Maitland was nominated a Companion of the Order of the Bath, and. was knighted in 1843. Some 609 officers, men and marines of Wellesley qualified for the China Medal. In all, 18 crew and 17 marines died, though not all did so in combat.
In the December of 1847 Wellesley was fitted at Plymouth for a cost of £11,157 as Flagship there between that month and the March of 1848. She was laid up at Chatham in the June of 1851.
In 1854 Wellesley was fitted as a guard ship for ordinary at Chatham and in that hat same year she became a harbour flagship and receiving ship there. By 1862 her role had changed to that of a training ship still serving at Chatham.On the 6th of April, 1868 the Admiralty lent her to the London School Ship Society, which refitted her as a Reformatory, renamed Cornwall, and she was moored off Purfleetl. Later, Cornwall reverting to her original name was moved to the Tyne and served as The Tyne Industrial Training Ship of the Wellesley Nautical School. In 1928, due to industrial development at that location, she was moved to Denton, below Gravesend.
Fate.
On the 24th of September, 1940 a German air-raid severely damaged Wellesley and she subsequently sank in the Thames. She was raised in 1948 and beached at Tilbury, where she was broken up. Some of her timbers found a home in the rebuilding of the Royal Courts of Justicei n London, while her figurehead now resides just inside the main gates of Chatham Dockyard.
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Figurehead of HMS Wellesley
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