HMS Blonde (1819)
HMS Blonde, by Robert Dampier, 1825
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History | |
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United Kingdom | |
Name | HMS Blonde |
Ordered | 11 December 1812 |
Builder | Deptford Dockyard |
Laid down | March 1816 |
Launched | 12 January 1819 |
Completed | 1824 |
Renamed | HMS Calypso on 9 March 1870 |
Reclassified | Receiving ship in November 1850 |
Fate | Sold on 28 February 1895 |
General characteristics | |
Class and type | 46-gun modified Apollo-class fifth-rate frigate |
Tons burthen | 1,103 bm |
Length |
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Beam | 39 ft 8 in (12.1 m) |
Depth of hold | 13 ft 6 in (4.11 m) |
Propulsion | Sails |
Sail plan | Full-rigged ship |
Complement | 315 |
Armament |
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HMS Blonde was a 46-gun modified Apollo-class fifth-rate frigate of 1,103 tons burthen. She undertook an important voyage to the Pacific Ocean in 1824. She was used for harbour service from 1850 and was renamed HMS Calypso in 1870, before being sold in 1895.[1]
Construction
Blonde was ordered on 11 December 1812 from Deptford Dockyard, to a new design developed from the lines of the Apollo class. She was laid down in March 1816, and was rated at 38 guns until February 1817. Blonde was launched on 12 January 1819, but was almost immediately laid up in ordinary at Greenhithe from between April 1819 and 1824, when she was completed and fitted for service at Woolwich. She cost a total of £38,266 to build, with a further £15,241 spent on fitting out.
Voyage to Hawaii
On 27 November 1824 they arrived at
: 4On 6 May they landed at Honolulu. A gardener named John Wilkinson had been brought from England to teach agriculture. Before they left England, Governor Boki had agreed to give some land to Wilkinson in the Mānoa Valley, although private ownership of land did not take hold until 1848 in Hawaii. The botanist Macrae left some coffee plants and others he had brought from Brazil. Unfortunately the climate did not agree with Wilkinson, who died in March 1827.[3]: 34 Coffee would take many more years to become a successful crop (see also coffee production in Hawaii and Kona coffee).
On 11 May a state funeral was held for the late King and Queen, the first Christian memorial service for a ruler of Hawaii. The crew and many of the Hawaiian nobility attended. On 7 June Blonde sailed back past Maui to Hilo, where they had church services on 12 June. For a while Hilo Bay was called "Byron's Bay" by Europeans. American missionary Joseph Goodrich led a party in an attempt to climb
On 25 June a party set out to visit the
On 27 July they crossed the equator planning to go to Tahiti. The crew of Blonde are credited as the first Europeans to see Malden Island, named for navigator Lieutenant Charles Robert Malden on 30 July 1825. They landed on the island, however, and discovered remains of houses. On 1 August they passed Starbuck Island, and landed at Maʻuke in the Cook Islands on 8 August. On 6 September they reached Valparaíso, explored the coast of Chile, and rounded Cape Horn on 29 December. On 7 March 1826, they rescued survivors of Frances Mary and arrived back in England on 15 March.[3]: 75
In 1826, Maria Graham published a book based on Rowland Bloxam's journal.[7] The Huntington Library in Southern California holds the original manuscript of Byron's log of the voyage to and from Hawaii in 1824 and 1825 (https://catalog.huntington.org/record=b1706285).
In 1835 Blonde was stationed at Valparaíso under the command of Commodore Francis Mason when HMS Challenger was shipwrecked. He was unwilling to risk the lee-shore, but captain Robert FitzRoy of HMS Beagle bullied him into jointly taking Blonde to the rescue.[8]
Service in China
This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (May 2012) |
HMS Blonde was involved in a number of actions in China during the First Opium War (1839–1842)[9]
The first introduction of the top-level bureaucrats of the Ottoman Empire to the combination of fork and knife occurred at the ball that took place on the British ship Blonde in Istanbul after the war of 1828–29.[10]
Fate
Blonde became a
'. She was renamed HMS Calypso on 9 March 1870. She was sold at Portsmouth on 28 February 1895.See also
References
- ISBN 978-1-86176-281-8.
- ISBN 9780824883157.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-554-60526-5.
- ^ Andrew Bloxam (1925). Diary of Andrew Bloxam: naturalist of the Blonde on her trip from England to the Hawaiian islands, 1824-25. Volume 10 of Bernice P. Bishop Museum special publication.
- ISBN 978-0-87022-176-7.
- ^ Alexander, William DeWitt (1894). "The "Hale o Keawe" at Honaunau, Hawaii". Journal of the Polynesian Society. 3. London: E. A. Petherick: 159–161.
- ^ Baron George Anson Byron, Richard Rowland Bloxam (1826). Maria Graham (ed.). Voyage of H. M. S. Blonde to the Sandwich islands, in the years 1824-1825. John Murray, London. p. 86.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - ^ "Letter no. 281, Charles Darwin to Caroline Darwin, [19] July – [12 August] 1835, Lima". Darwin Correspondence Project. Retrieved 24 January 2022.
- ^ "Anglo chinese war 1842". Archived from the original on 13 April 2013. Retrieved 7 May 2012.
- ^ D. Gürsoy, Turkish Cuisine, Istanbul, 2006, p. 137)
External links
- Media related to HMS Blonde (ship, 1819) at Wikimedia Commons