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HAZARD
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(16) |
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Built in 1794, Frindsbury.
Sold in 1817. |
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- 1794 J. LORING.
- 1795 R. D. OLIVER.
- 1796 A. RUDDACH, 09/1796.
- 1798 William BUTTERFIELD, 07/1798, Irish station. (BUTTERFIELD left the navy for a while in 1790 in disgust at the tyrannical behaviour of Junior Lieut. HANCORN of MELAMPUS in which BUTTERFIELD was a midshipman. He was impressed from the merchant navy in 1793 and restored to the quarter deck.)
- On 12 August 1798 he captured the French national brig NEPTUNE, 10, having on board 270 soldiers from the Isle de France bound for Brest.
HAZARD had 6 men wounded and the Frenchman 20 killed and wounded.As she returned to port with NEPTUNE she saw a French privateer with an English prize, the BRITANNIA, in tow, and directed a British frigate to the scene. - On 20 October 1800 HAZZARD left Portsmouth with a convoy for Newfoundland. She left them 300 miles to the westward, picked up home-bound ships for the Downs and returned to Portsmouth on 5 December. She sailed again on 17 January 1801, this time for Ireland with Captain BAKER as a passenger to join PHOEBE at Cork.
On 24 February 1801 HAZARD returned to Portsmouth with the TRITON in convoy. She was a homeward-bound East Indiaman which HAZARD had met up with on the 7th. about 70 miles S. W. of Cape Clear. The TRITON had taken only four months from Madras. - Her next job was escorting a convoy from Belfast safely through to the Downs, returning to Portsmouth on 13 May. On 20 June she sailed again for Cork to collect part of the West India fleet which she escorted through to the Downs.
- HAZARD spent the rest of the war prior to the Treaty of Amiens on similar convoy duty between England and Ireland.
- On 18 July 1801 a court martial was held on board GLADIATOR at Portsmouth on Lieut. John Alexander DOUGLASS of HAZARD charged with absenting himself without leave. He was sentenced to be dismissed from the service.
- On 25 August 1802 CONSTANCE and HAZARD, Capt. R. I. NEAVE, (NEVE) received orders to collect Dutch troops from Lymington and take them to Cuxhaven. They sailed on the 27th. and passed through Spithead on their way to the Elbe on the 31st.
- 1803 cruising in the Channel. She left Plymouth on 1 June 1803, returned on 7 July with dispatches from the Channel fleet and sailed again for the North coast of Spain. At the end of July rumours reached Plymouth that HAZARD had been taken by four French frigates while she was watching Ferrol and a neutral actually reported seeing her in the harbour with French colours. Capt. NEAVE sent two prizes into Plymouth on 6 August; a Danish brig from the West Indies and another brig which he retook after she had been captured by a privateer while sailing from Livorno to London with a cargo of hemp, marble and oil. HAZARD kept with her as a tender a French privateer of 16 guns which she had taken.
- In the spring of 1803 HAZARD was stationed off St. Ives, Cornwall, where French privateers would loiter to catch vessels sheltering in the bay. In the summer HAZARD's boats cut out a French coasting sloop off Quiberon and sent her into Plymouth on 6 August. She was laden with wheat.
- 1805 Charles DILKE, Plymouth.
Her boats were frequently involved in cutting out French merchant vessels from Rochefort and Bordeaux. - On 2 October 1807 the first lieutenant, William BERRY, was charged before a court martial of committing a homosexual offence with Thomas GIBBS, a boy from the ship. He was found guilty and hung from the starboard foreyard-arm of HAZARD in Plymouth Sound on Monday 19 October 1807. Unfortunately the knot twisted under his chin and, in spite of a 32-pound shot tied to his legs, he slowly strangled for 15 minutes. He was 22 years old.
- 1809 Hugh CAMERON, 02/1809, from ACHATES, Leeward Is. (Capt. DILKES moved to NEPTUNE)
On 22 January 1809 HAZARD, without any real expectation of falling in with any British cruisers, chased a large French frigate off Guadeloupe until baffling winds prevented her.
Meanwhile CLEOPATRA, investigating a strange sail, came across the frigate anchored under a battery near Point Noir and engaged her for forty minutes before JASON and HAZARD arrived and the Frenchman struck. She proved to be the national frigate LA TOPAZE (40) with 100 troops for the reinforcement of Cayenne. For some time TOPAZE was placed under the command of James ROBERTSON, the acting first lieutenant of HAZARD. She was taken into the Royal Navy as JEWEL. - HAZARD took part in the reduction of Martinique by Sir Alexander COCHRANE and General BECKWITH and then, with a number of small vessels, carried out a blockade of the Iles des Saintes where a French force of three ships of the line and two frigates was waiting for an opportunity to move across to Guadeloupe.
On 14 April 1809 British troops from Martinique under Major General MAITLAND landed in the Saintes and the French squadron made preparations to sail during the night. They were spotted by Lieut. ROBERTSON in a boat from HAZARD and he signalled the blockading ships with lights and rockets.
Rear Ad. COCHRANE was at a bit of a loss. The night was very dark and he was unable to determine if the ships that had sailed were the battleships or whether they had remained behind, and sent out the frigates to lure his ships away. In the morning the French ships were seen from the masthead and chased by POMPEE and RECRUIT who succeeded in crippling the HAUTPOULT until she could be brought to action and captured by POMPEE and CASTOR. HAZARD joined in the chase leaving Lieut. ROBERTSON and his crew to fend for themselves for 53 days. - On 16 October 1809 HAZARD and PELORUS, cruising off Guadeloupe discovered a French armed schooner moored under the battery of St. Marie in the bay of Point-a-Pî tre. That night two boats from each were sent in under Lieuts. Robertson and Edward FLINN to try and cut her out but they were defeated by darkness and rain and their inability to find a channel through the coral reefs.
The following day the two sloops stood in close to provide covering fire while Capt. CAMERON and Lieut. ROBERTSON in HAZARD's pinnace led the boats of PELORUS under Lieut. FLINN and master's mate SCOTT, and HAZARD's jolly boat under midshipman Hugh HUNTER in a dash towards the enemy under a hail of grape from her 18-pounder and two swivels. The pinnace grounded and had to be manhandled over a reef but as soon as she came alongside the schooner the French crew fled ashore where they kept up musket fire from some houses on the beach. When the schooner was found to be firmly aground her captors tried to set her on fire. Unfortunately the blaze started by William FERGUSON, HAZARD's boatswain, caused the magazine to explode and he was blown high into the air. He was rescued, completely naked, from the sea, his mind completely deranged.
Six men were killed, three from HAZARD James MURRAY, captain of the forecastle, and two marines, Thomas FARTHING and William PEREYMAN. Eight men from the two sloops were wounded. Capt. CAMERON, in his report, praised the conduct of Lieuts. ROBERTSON and FLINN and midshipmen John Stuart BRISBANE and Hugh HUNTER. - When OBSERVATEUR arrived off Basse-Terre, Guadeloupe, on 15 December 1809, with the news that French frigates were near, Captain Samuel James BALLAD's squadron consisting of BLONDE, 38, THETIS, 38, CYGNET, 18, and HAZARD immediately made sail. They were joined later by RINGDOVE, 18, SCORPION, 18, and the schooner ELIZABETH.
- On the 17th. two 'en flute' French frigates, LA SEINE and LA LOIRE, were sighted making for Basse-Terre.
Finding themselves cut-off they entered instead a cove called Anse de la Barque and anchored under the protection of batteries on each point of the entrance. On the morning of the 18th. BLONDE and THETIS entered the bay and destroyed both frigates. At nightfall the boats of the squadron under the orders of Capt. CAMERON landed under heavy fire to storm one of the forts. Capt. CAMERON was wounded by a musket ball as he hauled down the French colours and was killed as stood on the beach with the tricolour wound around his arm. At first it was thought that he had been hit by a grape-shot discharged by Mr FITCH, a master's mate in the ELIZABETH, but later a French colonel said that he had shot the captain with a musket. The naval medal was awarded in 1849 to all who took part in the action. - James ROBERTSON was appointed to be in temporary command until Capt. CAMERON's successor arrived from Halifax but, unfortunately for ROBERTSON, William ELLIOT removed from the PULTUSK brig at his own request to take over HAZARD on 25 December.
- During the attack on Guadeloupe in 1810 a French schooner, LA MOUCHE, which had recently arrived from France with dispatches, was seen to be on fire as she lay under the batteries in Anse de Barque and Lieut ROBERTSON with a few marines from HAZARD was sent in to board her. By the time they succeeded in bringing her off part of the deck had been burnt away and all her guns had discharged themselves in the intense heat. They salvaged from the flames French signal books and other important documents.
After the capitulation of Guadeloupe HAZARD carried home the bearers of the naval and military dispatches and, after extensive repairs, sailed for the Halifax station where she captured and destroyed many enemy vessels during the American war. Captain ELLIOT left the ship on 23 January 1811 when he was promoted. - 1811 John COOKESLEY, 24/01/1811, Halifax.
- 1814 Ditto, West Indies.
- 1815 Ditto, Spithead.
- 1816 to Newfoundland.
She returned to Portsmouth in October 1816 with news of the COMUS wrecked on Cape Hine. She went into harbour to be paid off. - 1817 Portsmouth.
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