HMS Bulldog

Seven vessels of the British Royal Navy have been named HMS Bulldog (or HMS Bull Dog), after the bulldog:

• The first Bulldog was a small 4-gun hoy bought in March 1794 and sold later at Jersey in the same year.
• The second Bull Dog was a 16-gun sloop launched in 1782 but converted to a Royal Navy bomb vessel in 1798. The French captured her in February 1801 when she unwittingly entered the French-held port of Ancona. Boats from HMS Mercury recaptured her in May, but adverse winds prevented her from escaping and the French recaptured her. In September, HMS Champion recaptured her off Gallipoli, Apulia. Bulldog returned to Portsmouth where she became a powder hulk. 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.

Citations and references

Citations

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.
• Winfield, Rif & Stephen S Roberts (2015) French Warships in the Age of Sail 1786 - 1861: Design Construction, Careers and Fates. (Seaforth Publishing). ISBN 9781848322042