The ''Jason''-class corvette was a type of wooden screw corvette made between 1859 and 1863. There were a total of seven ships of this class made by the authorization of the

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 foug ...

History

The first three ships were ordered in 1856 as units of the preceding although was quickly converted to a

fourth rate In 1603 all English warships with a compliment of fewer than 160 men were known as 'small ships'. In 1625/26 to establish pay rates for officers a six tier naval ship rating system was introduced.Winfield 2009 These small ships were divided i ...

later, but was first the ''Jason''-class corvette. The authorization to make these ships came from the

surveyor Surveying or land surveying is the technique, profession, art, and science of determining the terrestrial two-dimensional or three-dimensional positions of points and the distances and angles between them. A land surveying professional is c ...

at that time, who was in charge of making the . Two ships from the ''North Star'' class were then converted into their own class, the ''Jason'' class. They had covered decks and it was approved on 23 January 1860. Six more vessels were then brought into the ''Jason'' class and ordered by the

to be made in 1860. An additional pair was also added in 1861. However, all of these but were made the rest were ''Jason'' class and only ''Menai'' survived to become a ''North Star''-class vessel. The remnants of the ''North Star''-class ships were then called the ''Jason''-class ships which were used mostly in Australia to patrol or other duties.

Characteristics

These corvettes were open battery ships, first 21 (then 17) guns. This 21 gun design were of the Surveyor Departments design and they were approved on 10 February 1858. All of these ships were referred to as "Troop Frigates", all of them were ship-rigged with telescopic funnels. The Armstrong breech-loading guns that were on the ships were removed in 1864 following a string of catastrophic accidents. In the big picture, 4x8 guns were replaced by 4x4pdrs (28cwt/8 ft), then all the surviving quartet were all reduced to 17 guns instead of 21 by 1869. ''Jason'' had eight 64 pdrs and eight 8in shells and to add it had a 110 pdr Armstrong cannon. ''Wolverine'' and ''Barrosa'' had 17 64 pdrs; while ''Rattlesnake'' had a fair 9 x 64pdrs (8 x 8in shells) which of course was pivot mounted. Some of the ships had severe engine problems such as ''Wolverine'' its engine was never satisfactory.

Ships

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References

{{Jason class corvette Corvette classes Jason-class corvettes Victorian-era corvettes of the United Kingdom