HMS Trafalgar (1820)

For other ships with the same name, see HMS Trafalgar, HMS Camperdown, and HMS Pitt.

HMS Camperdown 1843
History
Royal Navy EnsignUnited Kingdom
NameHMS Trafalgar
Ordered12 June 1807
BuilderChatham Dockyard
Laid downMay 1813
Launched26 July 1820
Decommissioned1854
Renamed
  • HMS Camperdown, 22 February 1825
  • HMS Pitt, 29 July 1882
FateSold, May 1906
General characteristics [1]
Class and type98-gun second-rate ship of the line
Tons burthen2,404 bm
Length196 ft (60 m) (gundeck)
Beam52 ft 6 in (16.00 m)
Depth of hold22 ft 8 in (6.91 m)
PropulsionSails
Sail planFull-rigged ship
Armament
  • 98 guns:
  • Gundeck: 28 × 32 pdrs
  • Middle gundeck: 30 × 18 pdrs
  • Upper gundeck: 30 × 12 pdrs
  • Quarterdeck: 6 × 12 pdrs, 8 × 32 pdr carronades
  • Forecastle: 2 × 12 pdrs, 2 × 32 pdr carronades
  • Poop deck: 6 × 18 pdr carronades

HMS Trafalgar was ordered as a 98-gun second-rate ship of the line,[1] re-rated as a 106-gun first-rate ship of the line whose keel was laid in 1813 and which was launched on 26 July 1820 at Chatham. She was designed by the Surveyors of the Navy (including William Rule), and was the only ship built to her draught.[1]

She was renamed HMS Camperdown on 22 February 1825.

Camperdown was placed on harbour service as a guard ship at Portsmouth in 1854 and became a coal hulk (acting as a floating depot) at Portsmouth in 1860 and remained there thereafter.

She cannot have been the hulk referred to in the unpublished diary of Col. Archibald Butter (1857) as lying in Simons Bay, near Cape Town, South Africa: 'The Camperdown a hulk is kept as a store ship'. She was renamed HMS Pitt on 29 July 1882 and was sold out of the Navy in May 1906 and was broken up at Charlton.[2]

  1. ^ a b c Lavery, Ships of the Line Vol. 1, p. 187.
  2. ^ Wilson, p. 15