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HMS Sylph (1776)
Six vessels of the Royal Navy have been named HMS ''Sylph'' after the air spirits known as sylphs: * was a 14-gun sloop purchased by the Royal Navy in 1776, previously the merchant ''Lovely Lass''. She was renamed ''Lightning'' when she became a fire ship in 1779. She was sold in 1783. * was an 18-gun sloop purchased by the Royal Navy in 1780, previously the merchant cutter ''Active''. She was captured by France in 1782 and served that country until 1788. * was an 18-gun sloop launched in 1795. She played a key role in the action of 12 May 1796 before being broken up in 1811. * was an 18-gun brig-sloop launched in 1812 and wrecked in 1815. * was a 2-gun cutter launched in 1821 for the Post Office Packet Service but was never used. She was taken up by the Royal Navy in 1832 as a tender and lent to HM Customs as a watch vessel in 1862. She was sold in 1888. * was an destroyer launched in 1916. In 1917 she collided with and sank her sister ship . She was sold in 1926 but st ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by Kingdom of England, English and Kingdom of Scotland, Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against Kingdom of France, France. The modern Royal Navy traces its origins to the early 16th century; the oldest of the British Armed Forces, UK's armed services, it is consequently known as the Senior Service. From the middle decades of the 17th century, and through the 18th century, the Royal Navy vied with the Dutch Navy and later with the French Navy for maritime supremacy. From the mid 18th century, it was the world's most powerful navy until the World War II, Second World War. The Royal Navy played a key part in establishing and defending the British Empire, and four Imperial fortress colonies and a string of imperial bases and coaling stations secured the Royal Navy's ability to assert naval superiority ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sylph
A sylph (also called sylphid) is an air spirit stemming from the 16th-century works of Paracelsus, who describes sylphs as (invisible) beings of the air, his elementals of air. A significant number of subsequent literary and occult works have been inspired by Paracelsus's concept: Robert Alfred Vaughan noted that "the wild but poetical fantasies" of Paracelsus had probably exercised a larger influence over his age and the subsequent one than is generally supposed, particularly on the Rosicrucians, but that through the 18th century they had become reduced to "machinery for the playwright" and "opera figurantes with wings of gauze and spangles". Etymology "Sylph" is possibly a blend of from Latin '' sylvestris'' and '' nympha'', ''sylvestris'' being a common synonym for sylph in Paracelsus. Anthon and Trollope note a similar usage in the ''Aeneid'', where ''silvestris'' is taken as an elliptical form of ''nympha silvestris'' ("forest nymph"). Jacob Grimm uses this phrase as a gloss ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sloop-of-war
In the 18th century and most of the 19th, a sloop-of-war in the Royal Navy was a warship with a single gun deck that carried up to eighteen guns. The rating system covered all vessels with 20 guns and above; thus, the term ''sloop-of-war'' encompassed all the unrated combat vessels, including the very small gun-brigs and cutters. In technical terms, even the more specialised bomb vessels and fireships were classed as sloops-of-war, and in practice these were employed in the sloop role when not carrying out their specialised functions. In World War I and World War II, the Royal Navy reused the term "sloop" for specialised convoy-defence vessels, including the of World War I and the highly successful of World War II, with anti-aircraft and anti-submarine capability. They performed similar duties to the American destroyer escort class ships, and also performed similar duties to the smaller corvettes of the Royal Navy. Rigging A sloop-of-war was quite different from a civilia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fire Ship
A fire ship or fireship, used in the days of wooden rowed or sailing ships, was a ship filled with combustibles, or gunpowder deliberately set on fire and steered (or, when possible, allowed to drift) into an enemy fleet, in order to destroy ships, or to create panic and make the enemy break formation. Ships used as fire ships were either warships whose munitions were fully spent in battle, surplus ones which were old and worn out, or inexpensive purpose-built vessels rigged to be set afire, steered toward targets, and abandoned quickly by the crew. Explosion ships or "hellburners" were a variation on the fire ship, intended to cause damage by blowing up in proximity to enemy ships. Fireships were used to great effect by the outgunned English fleet against the Spanish Armada during the Battle of Gravelines, [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cutter (boat)
A cutter is a type of watercraft. The term has several meanings. It can apply to the rig (or Sail plan, sailplan) of a sailing vessel (but with regional differences in definition), to a governmental enforcement agency vessel (such as a coast guard or border force cutter), to a type of ship's boat which can be used under sail or oars, or, historically, to a type of fast-sailing vessel introduced in the 18th century, some of which were used as small warships. As a sailing rig, a cutter is a single-masted boat, with two or more headsails. On the eastern side of the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, the two headsails on a single mast is the fullest extent of the modern definition. In U.S. waters, a greater level of complexity applies, with the placement of the mast and the rigging details of the bowsprit taken into account so a boat with two headsails may be classed as a sloop. Government agencies use the term "cutter" for vessels employed in patrolling their territorial waters and other ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Action Of 12 May 1796
The action of 12 May 1796 was a minor naval engagement during the French Revolutionary Wars between a squadron of British Royal Navy frigates and a frigate and four smaller ships of the Batavian Navy. The British squadron had been detached on the previous day from the British North Sea fleet under Admiral Adam Duncan, which was cruising off the Batavian fleet anchorage at the Texel, while the Batavian squadron was returning to the Netherlands from the Norwegian coast where it had been sheltering since suffering defeat at the action of 22 August 1795 the previous year. As the Batavian squadron neared the Batavian coast, the British squadron under Captain Lawrence Halstead attacked. In his frigate HMS ''Phoenix'', Halstead was able to cut the Batavian frigate ''Argo'' off from the shore and bring it to battle, forcing it to surrender in just 20 minutes as other British ships closed with the combat. The remainder of the Batavian squadron had dispersed eastwards away from the frig ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Post Office Packet Service
The Post Office Packet Service dates to Tudor times and ran until 1823, when the Admiralty assumed control of the service. Originally, the Post Office used packet ships to carry mail packets to and from British embassies, colonies and outposts. The vessels generally also carried bullion, private goods and passengers. The ships were usually lightly armed and relied on speed for their security. However, Britain was at war almost continuously during the 18th and early 19th centuries with the result that packet ships did get involved in naval engagements with enemy warships and privateers, and were occasionally captured. Routes Atlantic and Mediterranean *North, Central and South America and the Caribbean Islands, *Spain, Portugal, Gibraltar, Italy, Greece ( Corfu was a British Protectorate from 1815 to 1864), Egypt. Northern Europe Routes ran at various times from Dover in Kent and Harwich in Essex to Calais, the Hook of Holland and Heligoland. Ireland The usual packet route w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ship's Tender
A ship's tender, usually referred to as a tender, is a boat, or a larger ship, used to service or support other boats or ships. This is generally done by transporting people or supplies to and from shore or another ship. A second and distinctly different meaning for ''tender'' is small boats carried by larger vessels, to be used either as lifeboats, or as transport to shore, or both. Tenders as smaller craft For a variety of reasons, it is not always advisable to try to tie a ship up at a dock; the weather or the sea might be rough, the time might be short, or the ship too large to fit. In such cases tenders provide the link from ship to shore, and may have a very busy schedule of back-and-forth trips while the ship is in port. On cruise ships, lifeboat tenders do double duty, serving as tenders in day-to-day activities, but fully equipped to act as lifeboats in an emergency. They are generally carried on davits just above the promenade deck, and may at first glance appear ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
HM Customs
HM Customs (His or Her Majesty's Customs) was the national Customs service of England (and then of Great Britain from 1707, the United Kingdom from 1801) until a merger with the Department of Excise in 1909. The phrase 'HM Customs', in use since the Middle Ages, referred both to the customs dues themselves and to the office of state established for their collection, assessment and administration. The payment of customs duty (i.e. a levy on imported or exported goods) has been recorded in Britain for well over a thousand years. A centralised system for their collection has been in place since the 13th century, overseen since the 17th century by a Board of Commissioners (the Board of Customs). In 1909, HM Customs was merged with the Excise department (responsible for raising revenue from inland taxes) to create HM Customs and Excise (HMCE), responsible for all forms of indirect taxation. Just under a century later, HMCE was itself merged with the Inland Revenue (responsible fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Destroyer
In naval terminology, a destroyer is a fast, manoeuvrable, long-endurance warship intended to escort larger vessels in a fleet, convoy or battle group and defend them against powerful short range attackers. They were originally developed in 1885 by Fernando Villaamil for the Spanish NavySmith, Charles Edgar: ''A short history of naval and marine engineering.'' Babcock & Wilcox, ltd. at the University Press, 1937, page 263 as a defense against torpedo boats, and by the time of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, these "torpedo boat destroyers" (TBDs) were "large, swift, and powerfully armed torpedo boats designed to destroy other torpedo boats". Although the term "destroyer" had been used interchangeably with "TBD" and "torpedo boat destroyer" by navies since 1892, the term "torpedo boat destroyer" had been generally shortened to simply "destroyer" by nearly all navies by the First World War. Before World War II, destroyers were light vessels with little endurance for unat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sister Ship
A sister ship is a ship of the same class or of virtually identical design to another ship. Such vessels share a nearly identical hull and superstructure layout, similar size, and roughly comparable features and equipment. They often share a common naming theme, either being named after the same type of thing or person (places, constellations, heads of state) or with some kind of alliteration. Typically the ship class is named for the first ship of that class. Often, sisters become more differentiated during their service as their equipment (in the case of naval vessels, their armament) are separately altered. For instance, the U.S. warships , , , and are all sister ships, each being an . Perhaps the most famous sister ships were the White Star Line's s, consisting of , and . As with some other liners, the sisters worked as running mates. Other sister ships include the Royal Caribbean International's and . ''Half-sister'' refers to a ship of the same class but with som ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Schooner
A schooner () is a type of sailing vessel defined by its rig: fore-and-aft rigged on all of two or more masts and, in the case of a two-masted schooner, the foremast generally being shorter than the mainmast. A common variant, the topsail schooner also has a square topsail on the foremast, to which may be added a topgallant. Differing definitions leave uncertain whether the addition of a fore course would make such a vessel a brigantine. Many schooners are gaff-rigged, but other examples include Bermuda rig and the staysail schooner. The origins of schooner rigged vessels is obscure, but there is good evidence of them from the early 17th century in paintings by Dutch marine artists. The name "schooner" first appeared in eastern North America in the early 1700s. The name may be related to a Scots word meaning to skip over water, or to skip stones. The schooner rig was used in vessels with a wide range of purposes. On a fast hull, good ability to windward was useful for pri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
