HMS Vengeur (1810)
HMS Vengeur was a Peake and Rule Armada Class, 74 gun ship of the line, ordered on the 20th of October 1806, and built by Joseph Graham at Harwich. Laid down in the July of 1807 she was launched on the 19th of June, 1810, and completed on the 30th of October 1810 at Chatham.
GREAT BRITAIN Name: HMS Vengeur Ordered: 20 October 1806 Builder: Graham, Harwich Laid down: July 1807 Launched: 19 June 1810 Fate: Broken up, 1843 Class and type: Armada Class, 74 gun ship of the line Tons burthen: 1764 (bm) Length: 176 ft 5 in (53.7 m) (gundeck) Beam: 47 ft 9.5 in (14.6 m) Depth of hold: 21 ft (6.4 m) Propulsion: Sails 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
Plan for the Vengeur.
Service.
HMS Vengeur was commissioned in the September of 1810 under Captain Thomas Brown. From 1811 she became the flagship of Admiral Sir Joseph Sidney Yorke. Brown escorted to Portugal a large body of troops sent as reinforcements to the Duke of Wellington's army there. Vengeur then cruised the Western Isles to protect an inbound fleet of East Indiamen.
Brown's replacement in November 1811 was Captain James Brisbane who commanded until the August of 1812 .
On the 26th of June, 1813, she sailed for Jamaica.
Robert Tristram Ricketts took command of Vengeur there in the October of 1813.
Vengeur, Lightning, and Madagascar were in company on the 6th of March, 1814, at the recapture of the Diamond.
In the May of that year the 9th Regiment of Foot marched from Bayonne to Bordeaux and embarked on HMS York and Vengeur to sail to Quebec to add support to the British Army already in the fight against the Americans during the War of 1812.
Vengeur then joined Vice Admiral Alexander Cochrane's fleet moored off New Orleans. The Commanding Officer of the Vengeur's Marine detachment, Brevet Major Thomas Adair, was made a Companion of the Order of the Bath for leading a party of 100 Royal Marines on a successful assault of the left bank of the Mississippi River. Although the strongpoint was taken, and seventeen cannon were captured, the battle was lost as the right bank remained impregnable. Of the two fatalities among the Royal Marines, one was from HMS Vengeur.
Ricketts commanded the British naval forces at the Second Battle of Fort Bowyer, the British attack on the American fort at Mobile Point in 1815. The British then attacked and captured Fort Bowyer at the mouth of Mobile Bay on 12 February. The British were making preparations to attack Mobile when news arrived of the peace treaty. The Treaty of Ghent had been ratified by the British Parliament but would not be ratified by Congress and the President until mid-February.
Captain Thomas Alexander took command in the August of 1815 and Vengeur served as a guardship at Portsmouth from the June 1816 until the May of 1818. From the October to the December of that year she was recommissioned and fitted out for sea.
Frederick Lewis Maitland took command of Vengeur’s recommissioning in the October of 1818, and in 1819 sailed her to South America. He took Lord George Beresford from Rio de Janeiro to Lisbon in 1820, and then returned to the Mediterranean. He then carried Ferdinand I, King of the Two Sicilies from Naples to Livorno, on his way to attend the Congress of Laibach (modern Ljubljana). The passage was rough and lasted seven days, but they arrived safely on 20 December. After His Majesty landed, he personally invested Maitland with the insignia of a knight-commander of the order of St. Ferdinand and of Merit, and gave him a gold box with the king's portrait set in diamonds.
Vengeur in Naples Bay with the Neapolitan flag at her main masthead, 1820, by Nicolas S. Cammillieri
Maitland and Vengeur then returned to England, arriving at Spithead on 29 March 1821. Vengeur was found to be defective and was paid off on 18 May 1821 at Chatham.
Fate.
She was fitted as a receiving ship between July 1823 and February 1824. She then travelled to Sheerness where she served as a receiving ship until 1838. She was broken there up in the August of 1843.
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