HMS Comus (1878)

HMS Comus
History
United Kingdom
Name	HMS Comus
Builder	J. Elder & Co., Glasgow
Laid down	1876
Launched	4 April 1878
Fate	Sold in 1904
General characteristics
Class and type	Comus-class corvette
Displacement	2,380 long tons
Length	225 ft (69 m)
Beam	44.6 ft (14 m)
Draught	16 ft 9 in (5 m) forward 18 ft 10 in (6 m) aft
Propulsion	2 engines of 2,590 ihp driving single screw
Speed	13 kt
Complement	250
Armament	As built:[1] 2 × 7-inch muzzle-loading rifles 4 × BL 6-inch 80-pounder guns 8 × 64-pdr muzzle-loading rifles 2 × light guns 8 × QF Nordenfelt guns 2 × torpedo carriages

HMS Comus was a corvette (reclassified in 1888 as a third-class cruiser) of the Royal Navy. She was the name ship of her class. Launched in April 1878, the vessel was built by Messrs. J. Elder & Co of Glasgow at a cost of £123,000.^[2]

Comus and her classmates were built during a period of naval transition. Sail was giving way to steam, wooden hulls to metal, and smooth-bore muzzle-loading guns to naval rifles. Comus shows this transition; she was driven by both sails and a reciprocating steam engine; her hull was iron and steel but sheathed with wood and copper; and some of her muzzleloading guns were replaced by rifled breechloaders.

Comus was active for about two decades, but in that time went to the ends of empire, from the British Isles to the Caribbean and Nova Scotia to southwest Africa in the western hemisphere, and in the eastern, from the southern Indian Ocean to the northwest Pacific, and from the China station to the Strait of Magellan.