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His Majesty's ship Blossom off the Sandwich Islands
Class overview
Name	Cormorant class
Operators	Royal Navy
Built	1793–1817
In service	1794–1833
Completed	30
Cancelled	1
General characteristics
Type	Ship sloop
Tons burthen	422.7 bm
Length	108 ft 4 in (33 m) (gundeck) 90 ft 9.625 in (28 m) (keel)
Beam	29 ft 7 in (9 m)
Depth of hold	9 ft 0 in (2.74 m)
Sail plan	Full-rigged ship
Complement	125 (121 from 1794)
Armament	First group as built: Sixteen 6-pounder long guns Later: Sixteen 24-pounder carronades Eight 12-pounder carronades Second group: Sixteen 32-pounder carronades Eight 18-pounder carronades Two 6-pounder

The Cormorant class were built as a class of 16-gun ship sloops for the Royal Navy, although they were re-rated as 18-gun ships soon after completion.

Design

The two Surveyors of the Navy – Sir William Rule and Sir John Henslow – jointly designed the class. A notation on the back of the plans held at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, states that the designers based their plan on the lines of the captured French sloop Amazon, captured in 1745.

The Admiralty ordered six vessels to this design in February 1793; it ordered a seventh vessel in the following year. These ships were initially armed with sixteen 6-pounder guns, later supplemented with eight 12-pounder carronades (6 on the quarterdeck and 2 on the forecastle). The 6-pounder guns were eventually replaced by 24-pounder carronades.

Twenty-four more ships of the same design were ordered in 1805–1806. However in this new batch 32-pounder carronades were fitted instead of the 6-pounder guns originally mounted in the earlier batch; the 12-pounder carronades were replaced by 18-pounders, and some ships also received two 6-pounders as chase guns on the forecastle.

Of this second batch one ship (Serpent) was cancelled and another (Ranger) completed to a slightly lengthened variant of the design.

Ships

Batch 1 (with 6-pounder guns)

• Note 1: Lynx caused an international incident in 1795 when she fired on USRC Eagle.

Batch 2 (with 32-pounder carronades)

• Note 2: The initial contractor for Anacreon, Owen of Ringmore, Devon, went bankrupt in 1810, so work was transferred to Plymouth Dockyard.
• Note 3: The initial contractor for North Star and Hesper, Benjamin Tanner of Dartmouth, went bankrupt in 1807 and the two contracts were transferred to John Cock.
• Note 4: Ranger was altered on stocks and completed to a slightly longer design, being 111¼ ft on the gundeck.

References

1. ^ Winfield, Rif. British Warships in the Age of Sail: 1793–1817. p. 252.
2. National Maritime Museum collections.
3. Winfield, Rif. British Warships in the Age of Sail: 1793–1817. p. 262.

• British Warships in the Age of Sail: 1793–1817, Rif Winfield, Seaforth Publishing, 2007. ISBN 978-1-84415-717-4

• Cormorant-class ship-sloops
• Sloop classes