A Victorian Sloop

The Last Victorian Sloop

Built in 1878 she served as an operational sloop of Queen Victoria's Royal Navy until 1895 before being converted into a drill ship in 1902. From then until 1911 she served as HMS President, the Headquarters' ship of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, and from 1914 to 1968 as the dormitory ship for a boys pre-sea training school, TS Mercury, moored on the River Hamble.

Sloops of the Victorian Royal Navy

The colossal expansion of the British Empire during the Victorian age, combined with increasing industrial production placed great demands upon the Royal Navy and its role to protect British interests and trade worldwide. During this period Britain had become the workshop of the world with the Empire's import and export trade expanding eighteen-fold during the 19th century from £80m in 1801 to nearly £1.5 billion in 1901. By the turn of the 20th century the landmass of the British Empire had surpassed 11 million square miles with a population of over 390m people and the British merchant marine had expanded from around 2m tons at the end of the Napoleonic wars to 6.5 m tons by 1880.

The burden of protecting Britain's trade and empire fell largely to the smaller ships of the Royal Navy. In 1837, upon her accession to the throne, Queen Victoria inherited a Royal Navy whose sloops were still rated below the 6th rate 'frigates' of the line. Two or three masted, these sloops were powered by sail and armed with between eight and twenty light guns carried on the upper deck. Economical, both in terms of both cost to build and man, their small size was ideal for operations in shallow waters and inaccessible river and inshore locations to protect British traders lives and property against piracy, native attack and internal disturbances.

From 1837 the number of ships employed on such duties increased steadily as did the number of the Royal Navy's overseas bases. At the same time new technologies and materials were introduced to warship construction with the advent of steam propulsion and iron and steel construction. Between 1860 and 1904, 71 sloops or 'unarmoured cruising ships' entered service with the Royal Navy. However, even these were not thought to be enough to meet the task leading Sir Alexander Milne, First Naval Lord (1872-1876), to advocate the construction of a further 250 such ships specifically for the defence of trade.

In 1875, three years before her launch, Sloop's had been re-defined as any vessel of cruising type, carrying between 100-200 officers and men and generally were the largest type of Royal Navy vessel to carry a Commander's pennant.

When launched, HMS Gannet, as an Osprey/Doterel class ship, was classified as both a sloop of war and as a colonial cruiser, with a Commander in command. As such she was ranked between a corvette (commanding officer, Captain, R.N.) and a gun vessel (commanding officer, Lieutenant, R.N.) and therefore could operate as an independent command, although often such ships operated in Squadrons when stationed overseas.