HMS Merlin

Fourteen ships and one

• HMS Merlin (1579) was a 10-gun pinnance built in 1579 and listed until 1601.
• HMS Merlin (1652) was a 14-gun yacht launched in 1652 and captured by a Dutch squadron off Cadiz in 1665 while she was convoying victualing ships to Tangier; her resistance restricted the Dutch to capturing only four of her charges.^[1]
• HMS Merlin (1666) was an 8-gun yacht launched in 1666 and sold in 1698.
• HMS Merlin (1699) was a 2-gun sloop launched in 1699 and sold in 1712.
• HMS Merlin (1744) was a 10-gun sloop launched in 1744 and sold in 1750.
• HMS Merlin (1753) was a 10-gun sloop in service in 1753.
• HMS Merlin (1756) was a 10-gun sloop launched in 1756. She was captured by a French privateer in 1757, but recaptured later that year and renamed HMS Zephyr. The French frigate Gracieuse recaptured her in August 1778;^[2] she was disarmed and sold at Toulon in January 1780 for Lt44,200.^[3] The purchasers turned her into a privateer, which the British privateer Fame captured and burnt on 26 August 1780.^[2]
• HMS Merlin (1757) was a 16-gun sloop launched in 1757, having been purchased on the stocks. She was abandoned and burnt in 1777 after she grounded on a sandbank while attacking the fort on Mud Island in the Delaware River below Philadelphia.^[4]
• HMS Merlin (1780) was an 18-gun sloop launched in 1780, having been purchased on the stocks. She was sold in 1795.
• HMS Merlin (1796) was a 16-gun sloop launched in 1796 and broken up in 1803.
• HMS Merlin (1803) was a 16-gun sloop, previously in civilian service as Hercules. She was purchased in 1803 and sold in 1836.
• packet
  launched in 1838 and sold in 1863.
• HMS Merlin (1871) was a composite screw gunboat launched in 1871 and sold in 1891.
• HMS Merlin (1901) was a Cadmus-class sloop launched in 1901. She was used as a survey vessel from 1906 and was sold in 1923.

Merlin has also been the name of a Royal Naval Air Station shore establishment:

• HMS Merlin was a Royal Navy airbase of the
  RNAS Donibristle and located at Donibristle, Fife. It was a former RAF station, but was transferred to the Admiralty and commissioned
  in 1939, and was paid off in 1959.

References

• ISBN 978-1-86176-281-8
  .
• Demerliac, Alain (1996) La Marine De Louis XVI: Nomenclature Des Navires Français De 1774 À 1792. (Nice: Éditions OMEGA).
  ISBN 2-906381-23-3
• Hepper, David J. (1994). British Warship Losses in the Age of Sail, 1650-1859. Rotherfield: Jean Boudriot.
  ISBN 0-948864-30-3
  .

List of ships with the same or similar names

This article includes a list of ships with the same or similar names. If an internal link for a specific ship led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended ship article, if one exists.