HMS Saldanha (1809)

1803 plan of the Apollo class
History
United Kingdom
NameSaldanha
NamesakeCapitulation of Saldanha Bay
Ordered1 October 1806
BuilderTemple shipbuilders, South Shields
Laid downMarch 1807
Launched8 December 1809
Completed6 July 1810
CommissionedApril 1810
FateWrecked 4 December 1811
General characteristics [1]
Class and typeApollo-class fifth-rate frigate
Tons burthen951 2994 (bm)
Length
  • 144 ft 8 in (44.1 m) (overall)
  • 121 ft 4+58 in (37.0 m) (keel)
Beam38 ft 4+34 in (11.7 m)
Depth of hold13 ft 2+12 in (4.0 m)
PropulsionSails
Complement264
Armament

HMS Saldanha was a 36-gun fifth-rate Apollo-class frigate of the Royal Navy. She was commissioned in April 1810 and spent her entire career serving on the Irish Station, including capturing a fast-sailing French privateer on 11 October 1811. In the evening of 4 December that year Saldanha was serving off Lough Swilly when she was caught in a storm. Last seen sailing off Fanad Head, the ship was wrecked in a nearby bay with every person on board being killed and the only survivors being a parrot and a dog. The wreck was memorialised by Thomas Sheridan in his poem The Loss of the Saldanha.

  1. ^ Winfield (2008), p. 159.