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FREDERICKSTEIN
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Taken on 7 September 1807 at the surrender of Copenhagen.
Broken up in 1813. |
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- In the summer of 1810 Capt. Francis BEAUFORT was appointed to her following his promotion to post rank in May. She was employed initially in the Archipelago hunting the pirates which infested the south of Morea.
- They found one of these pirates, a fast rowboat armed with a swivel and twenty muskets and manned by forty men, concealed in a small creek on the barren island of Hermonissi to the westward of Stampalia.
As FREDERICKTEIN's boats approached they were fired on from the cliffs and two seamen were wounded by large stones.
They destroyed the vessel and took some of her crew prisoner but the rest retreated to the heights where they lit fires to warn other pirate vessels.
Capt. BEAUFORT left them on the island for a couple of nights, when starvation made them anxious to surrender.
Three days earlier two pirates had divided the proceeds of a Turkish boat on a rock near Stampalia.
Here they had massacred the crew of five, leaving their bodies for the birds.
The one passenger who was spared had his ear cut off, his wound was treated by FREDERICKSTEIN's surgeon. - When their Lordships decided in 1811 to employ a frigate to survey the southern coast of Asia Minor they selected FREDERICKSTEIN since she was already stationed in the area.
A passport was obtained from the Turkish government and she sailed from Smyrna in July 1811 to the coast of Karamania. - They started operations at Boodroom (ancient Halicarnassus, modern Bodrum) and moved along the coast to Cape Avova in the Gulf of Adalia.
(Antalya) Here they were surprised to hear the sound of heavy guns although the coast appeared to be almost uninhabited.
They learnt from a Turkish vessel that a civil war between two Pashas was in progress at Adalia some eighteen miles along the coast.
Capt. BEAUFORT decided to remain at his anchorage and continue with his observations of a solar eclipse but he became involved when a large body of refugees begged a British watering party to protect them from their pursuers.
He gave them bread and surgical assistance and offered them a sailing launch which had been found adrift.
Since they were not seamen they declined this offer and resolved to die with their arms in their hands.
However when they were surrounded by a party of cavalry and an armed ship was about to open fire on them, Capt. BEAUMONT decided that he could not watch them being butchered in cold blood.
He sent in his boats and had the satisfaction of saving sixty fellow-creatures from slaughter. - They continued to survey along the coast until, on 20 June 1812, they were embarking their instruments from a little cove to the westward of Ayas, a town on the western shore of the Gulf of Alexandretta (Iskenderon).
A party of armed Turks was seen approaching the boat but Capt. BEAUMONT paid them little attention since some of his officers were working about the neighbourhood accompanied by local villagers, some of whom had, within the hour, been pointing out inscriptions on the tower to him.
However they seemed to have been incited to violence by an old man and when they started levelling their muskets he decided to retreat.
He fired his fowling piece over their heads which gave them time to run for the boats but, as they turned the boat's head round, one of the Turks took deliberate aim and shot the captain through the groin.
The pinnace was luckily within signal distance and before the captain fainted from lack of blood he sent her round to collect the scattered officers.
Before it could reach the castle Mr OLIPHERT, who was midshipman of a small boat there, was killed by Turks. - The captain's wound was treated by Dr Hugh STEWART, the surgeon, but showed no sign of healing in the extreme climate of the Levant.
FREDERICKSTEIN returned to Malta where the ship was found to be in a bad state so it was decided to abandon the survey and she was ordered to bring a convoy back to England, arriving before the close of the year.
FREDERICKSTEIN was broken up during the following year. - Capt. BEAUMONT's work resulted in a set of charts of the coast of Asia Minor being engraved for the Admiralty.
He published a book in 1817 named KARAMANIA " A brief description of the south coast of Asia Minor, and the remains of antiquity.'
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