HMS Bulldog

Seven vessels of the British Royal Navy have been named HMS Bulldog, after the bulldog:

• The first Bulldog was a small 4-gun vessel bought in March 1794 and sold later in the same year.
• The second Bulldog was a 16-gun sloop launched in 1782 but converted to a Royal Navy bomb vessel in 1798. She was broken up at Portsmouth in December 1829.
• The third Bulldog was a wooden steam powered paddle sloop launched in 1845 but ran aground in 1865 whilst attacking Haiti as part of a punitive raid against revolutionaries who had seized the British consulate. Unable to get her off of the reef, the British blew her up.
• The fourth Bulldog was a third class gunboat of the Ant-class, sold for scrapping in 1906.
• The fifth Bulldog was a Beagle class destroyer scrapped in 1920.
• The sixth Bulldog was a destroyer launched in 1930 and scrapped in 1946. She is most famous for the actions of some of her crew in making the first capture of an Enigma machine.
• The seventh Bulldog was launched in 1967 as the lead ship of the Bulldog-class coastal survey ships and sold in 2001 for conversion to a private yacht.

References

• Colledge, J. J.; Warlow, Ben (2006) [1969]. Ships of the Royal Navy: The Complete Record of all Fighting Ships of the Royal Navy (Rev. ed.). London: Chatham Publishing. ISBN 978-1-86176-281-8.