Nemesis (1839)

For other ships with the same name, see Nemesis (disambiguation).

An engraving of Nemesis (published 1844)
History
NameNemesis
OwnerEast India Company
BuilderBirkenhead Iron Works
Launched1839
CommissionedMarch 1840[1]
FateSold in 1852[2]
General characteristics
Class and typePaddle frigate[2]
Tons burthen660 bm
Length184 ft (56 m)
Beam29 ft (8.8 m)
Draught6 ft (1.8 m)
PropulsionTwin 60 horsepower George Forrester & Co. steam engines[3]
Armament2 × 32-pounder + 4 × 6-pounder guns, + 1 × Congreve rocket launcher

Nemesis was the first British ocean-going iron warship. She was the largest of a class of six similar vessels ordered by the 'Secret Committee' of the East India Company. Nemesis, together with her sister ships Phlegethon, Pluto, Proserpine, Ariadne, and Medusa, was built by John Laird's yard at Birkenhead and William Fairbairn & Sons at Millwall.[4]

Launched in 1839, the Nemesis was deployed to China – arriving late 1840 – and used to great effect in the First Opium War by Captain William Hutcheon Hall and later in 1842 by Captain Richard Collinson.[5] The Chinese referred to her as the "devil ship".[2]

  1. ^ "Hong Kong Museum of Coastal Defence". Leisure and Cultural Services Department. Accessed 26 January 2010.
  2. ^ a b c Paine, Lincoln P. (2000). Warships of the World to 1900. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 115. ISBN 0-395-98414-9.
  3. ^ Marks, Robert B. (2007). The Origins of the Modern World: A Global and Ecological Narrative from the Fifteenth to the Twenty-first Century (2nd ed.). Rowman & Littlefield. p. 116. ISBN 0-7425-5419-8.
  4. ^ Marshall, Adrian G. (23 October 2015). Nemesis: The First Iron Warship and Her World. NUS Press. pp. 12–13. ISBN 9789971698225 – via Google Books.
  5. ^ "The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British and Foreign India, China, and Australia". The Asiatic Journal. Parbury, Allen, and Company: 300. 1842.