Fourth Rate 50 gun ships of the Royal Navy.

[Bligh]

HMS Grampus (1802)

HMS Grampus, originally named HMSTiger, was a Sir John Henslow designed Diomede Class 50 gun fourth rate ship, built by M/shipwright George White until the March of 1793, then Edward Tippett until the October of 1799, and completed by Thomas Pollard at Portsmouth Dockyard. Ordered on the 9th of December, 1790, she was laid down in the October of 1792, and launched on the 20th of March, 1802. She was completed on the 11th of April, 1803.


HMS Grampus

History
GREAT BRITAIN
Name:	HMS Grampus
Ordered:	9 December 1790
Builder:	White, Portsmouth Dockyard
Laid down:	October 1792
Launched:	20 March 1802
Commissioned:	March 1803
Renamed:	Built as Tiger Renamed Grampus on 4 March 1802
Fate:	Sold in late 1832
General characteristics
Class and type:	Diomede Class 50 gun fourth rate ship
Tons burthen:	1,114 ​31⁄94 (bm)
Length:	151 ft (46.0 m) (gundeck) 124 ft 7 1⁄2 in (38.0 m) (keel)
Beam:	41 ft 0 in (12 m)
Depth of hold:	17 ft 8 in (5.4 m)
Sail plan:	Full rigged ship
Armament:	Lower gundeck: 22 × 24pdr guns Upper gundeck: 22 × 12pdr guns QD: 4 × 6 pdr guns Fc: 2 × 6pdr guns

Service.

HMS Grampus was commissioned by Captain Hugh Downman in the March of 1803, but in the following month command passed to Captain Thomas Gordon Caulfield, and she was ordered to the Downs on the 7th of May. As soon as her complement of men was completed and her bounty paid, she sailed for the East Indies to join Admiral Edward Thornbrough’s squadron off Goree.
On the 19th of May Jalouse captured Jong Jan Pieter.^] Jalouse shared the prize money with Grampus and the Gun Brigs Censor and Vixen, with whom she had been in company.

Grampus returned to Portsmouth from Gurnsey on the 20th of June to fit out for the East Indies and sailed with a convoy under her protection on the 29th. She carried £100,000 that the Honourable East India Company was shipping to Bengal. By the16th of October she was three days out of Rio in company with HMS Russell together with the Indiamen which they were escorting. After their arrival in the Indies, Grampus was destined to spend until the end of 1809 in the East Indies or at the Cape.

In the March of 1806 Captain James Haldane Tait relieved Caulfield in command of Grampus. Later she was stationed at the Cape of Good Hope, and returned home in the summer of 1809, escorting a large convoy of East India Company ships which Captain Tait had taken under his protection at St Helena.

He was presented by the Court of directors with a sum of money for the purchase of a piece of plate. Grampus was paid off because of her poor condition at the end of 1809. Grampus then underwent a repair and refit at Chatham which was completed by the February of 1810. During her refit, in the January of 1810, she was recommissioned under the command of Captain William Hanwell who was to command her until 1812. On the 28th of April she sailed with a convoy destined for the East Indies and saw them safely through to the coast of Africa.
Having returned to Portsmouth, on the 30th of September, a courts martial was convened on board HMS Raisonnable to try Lieutenant John Cheshire of Grampus. Captain Hanwell having accused him of insolence, contempt, and disrespect on the 11th of April, and similar conduct, coupled with neglect of duty, on the 15th of that same month. The court found that the charges were unfounded and acquitted Lieutenant Cheshire.

In the November of 1811 Commodore George Cockburn hoisted his broad pendant on board Grampus, preparatory to proceeding as one of three commissioners, the others being Thomas Sydenham and John Morier, all nominated by the Prince Regent to mediate between Spain and her colonies. They arrived in Cadiz on the 21st of April, 1812, only to discover that the Spanish government and the majority of the Cortes resolved to retain absolute control over their South American possessions instead of taking a liberal view as proposed by the British government. He returned from his unsuccessful mission on 4 August.

Grampus then sailed to North America under Captain Robert Barrie on the in the June of that same year, and thence to the Leeward Islands on the 2nd of September. In the following month command was transferred to Captain Francis Collier until 1815 as the Flagship of Rear Admiral Sir Francis Laforey, effective from 1813. From 1814 to 1815 Grampus spent time in the East Indies before returning to England to be paid off and laid up at Woolwich in the July of that year.

Fate.



In 1816 she was transferred to Deptford where she was converted to a troopship in 1817, and then by Admiralty Orders issued on the 13th of January 1820 she was fitted and used as a hospital ship at there from 1820 until being lent to the Society for Distressed Seamen in 1824. She served in this role in the Thames until 1831 when she was returned to the Royal Navy and sold at Woolwich to a Mr Batson in late 1832.

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H.M.S. Grampus lying off Deptford Creek, Greenwich