HMS Tartar (1801)
HMS Tartar was a fifth-rate 32-gun frigate of the Royal Navy. She was built at Frindsbury and launched in 1801. She captured privateers on the Jamaica station and fought in the Gunboat War and elsewhere in the Baltics before being lost to grounding off Estonia in 1811.
Jamaica station
Captain James Walker commissioned Tartar in July 1801 and sailed for Jamaica in October. In June 1802 Captain Charles Inglis took command and in 1803 Captain John Perkins succeeded him. Tartar was in Captain John Loring's squadron at Vanguard's capture of the 74-gun Third Rate Duquesne and the 16-gun Oiseau off San Domingo on 25 July.
In 1804, Tartar was on the Jamaica Station under Capt. Keith Maxwell, who was posted on 1 May. On 31 July, she was in the narrow and intricate channel between the island of Saona and San Domingo when she sighted a schooner using her sweeps in attempt to escape. Maxwell suspected the schooner was a privateer and gave chase until neither vessel could go any farther through the channel. He then sent three boats after the vessel, which hoisted French colours and opened fire with grape from her great guns and musketry from 50 men lining her side. The British captured her for the loss of two men wounded. The French lost nine killed and six wounded, who were sent to San Domingo under flag of truce. The privateer was the Hirondelle, Capt. La Place, armed with ten 4-pounders.
At the end of 1804, Captain Edward Hawker removed from Theseus to Tartar and sailed her from Jamaica to the Halifax station. On 9 January 1805 Tartar accompanied by HMS Surveillante captured Spanish ship El Batidor.[1] On 9 June 1806, Tartar and the 10-gun sloop Bachus captured the French brig Observateur, Capt. Crozier, of 18 guns and 104 men. Observateur had sailed from Cayenne on 13 May with the brig-of-war Argus, victualled for a cruise of 4 months. Later in the year Capt. Hawker exchanged with Capt. Stephen Poyntz of Melampus and Tartar returned to England under reduced masts to repair damage received in a hurricane.
Gunboat War
In October, Capt. G.E.B. Bettesworth took command, fitting out at Deptford for service in the Baltic. This was early in the Gunboat War between Britain and Denmark-Norway.
On 15 May 1807, in what became known as the Battle of Alvøen, Tartar approached Bergen under Dutch colours to attack the Dutch frigate Guelderland, which had been undergoing repairs there. Unfortunately the Guelderland had already sailed, so during the night Bettesworth sent in boats in an attempt to attack other shipping in the harbour. When the boats came under heavy fire, Tartar came in to cover them but she was attacked by the schooner Odin and five gunboats. Bettesworth and another seaman were killed and twelve men were wounded before Tartar was able to make her escape.
On 3 November 1808, under Capt. Joseph Baker, Tartar was escorting a convoy off the Naze of Norway. She sighted a sloop and gave chase. After a chase of three hours, Tartar captured the sloop, which turned out to be the Danish privateer Naargske Gutten, of seven 6 and 4-pounders and 36 men. She was quite new and only one day out from Christiansand.
On 15 May 1809, Baker and Tartar chased a Danish privateer sloop on shore near Felixberg on the coast of Courland. She was armed with two 12-pounders and two long 4-pounders and carried a crew of 24. These, armed with muskets, took up positions behind the sandhills where some local civilians joined them. Baker sent in his boats. The cutting out party suffered no losses. The British cutting out party boarded her, without loss, and turned the privateer's guns on the beach. One of the prize crew was lucky to discover a lighted candle set in a powder cartridge in the magazine and extinguished it when it had only a half an inch to burn. The magazine contained about a hundredweight of powder; had it exploded it would have killed boarding party. Baker considered this artifice a dishonourable mode of warfare. The prize crew brought the sloop off.
Battle of Anholt
At the beginning of March 1811 Vice Admiral Sir James Saumarez received information that the Danes would attack the island of Anholt, on which there was a garrison of British forces under Capt. Maurice of the Royal Navy. Tartar sailed from Yarmouth on the 20th and anchored off the north end of the island on the 26th. On the 27 March the garrison sighted the enemy off the south side of the island. Maurice marched to meet them with a battery of howitzers and 200 infantry, and signaled Tartar and Sheldrake. The two vessels immediately weighed and, under a heavy press of sail made every endeavour to beat south but the shoals forced them to stand so far out that it took them many hours.
The Danes, who had eighteen heavy gunboats for support, landed some 1000 troops in the darkness and fog and attempted to outflank the British positions. Their attack was uncoordinated and poorly equipped. However the batteries at Fort Yorke (the British base) and Massareenes stopped the assault. Gunfire from Tartar and Sheldrake forced the gunboats to move off westwards. The gunboats made their escape over the reefs while the ships had to beat round the outside. Tartar chased three gunboats towards Læsø but found herself in shoal water as night approached and gave up the chase. On the way back Tartar captured two Danish transports that it had passed while chasing the gunboats; one of them had 22 soldiers on board, with a considerable quantity of ammunition, shells and the like, while the other contained provisions.
Sheldrake managed to capture two gunboats. The Danes on the western side managed to embark on board fourteen gunboats and make their escape. The Battle of Anholt cost the British only two killed and 30 wounded. The Danes lost their commander, three other officers, and 50 men killed. The British took, besides the wounded, five captains, nine lieutenants, and 504 rank and file as prisoners, as well as three pieces of artillery, 500 muskets, and 6,000 rounds of ammunition. In addition, Sheldrake's two captured gunboats resulted in another two Lieutenants of the Danish Navy, and 119 men falling prisoner.
Fate
Tartar grounded on 18 August 1811 on Dagö Island off the coast of Estonia and sprang a leak. Her crew refloated but she continued to fill with water. She was run ashore on 21 August at Kahar Islet, midway between Dagö Island and the Isle of Worms, and later burnt. Ethalion rescued all her crew, who then were re-assigned to other ships on the Baltic station. A court martial on 23 October honorably acquitted Captain Baker, his officers and crew.[2]
References
- ^ Stephen Minot, Prize Agent, Notice of Prize Money published in the London Gazette, 9 May 1809", http://www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/16255/pages/665, accessed 2nd November, 2009
- ^ Grocott (1997), 318.
- Colledge, J.J. Ships of the Royal Navy: The Complete Record of All Fighting Ships of the Royal Navy From the Fifteenth Century to the Present. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 1987. ISBN 0-87021-652-X.
- Grocott, Terence (1997) Shipwrecks of the revolutionary & Napoleonic eras. (Mechanicsburg: Stackpole). ISBN 1861760302
- Winfield, Rif. British Warships in the Age of Sail, 1793-1817: Design, Construction, Careers and Fates. Seaforth Publishing, 2nd edition, 2008. ISBN 978-1-84415-717-4.