HMS Porgey (1807)

History
UK
Name:	HMS Porgey
Ordered:	11 December 1805
Builder:	Goodrich & Co. (prime contractor), Bermuda
Laid down:	1806
Launched:	May 1807
Fate:	Burnt to avoid capture 14 June 1810
General characteristics [1]
Type:	Ballahoo-class schooner
Tonnage:	70  ^41⁄94 (bm)
Length:	55 ft 2 in (16.8 m) (overall) 40 ft 10 ^1⁄2 in (12.5 m) (keel)
Beam:	18 ft 0 in (5.5 m)
Depth of hold:	9 ft 0 in (2.7 m)
Sail plan:	Schooner
Complement:	20
Armament:	4 x 12-pounder carronades

HMS Porgey was a Royal Navy Ballahoo-class schooner of four 12-pounder carronades and a crew of 20. The prime contractor for the vessel was Goodrich & Co., in Bermuda, and she was launched in 1804.^[1] Like many of her class and the related Cuckoo-class schooners, she succumbed to the perils of the sea relatively early in her career.

Service

She was commissioned in 1807 under Lieutenant Elmes Steele. In June of that year she was in the Bay of Fundy. While there she pursued smugglers and impressed sailors in Passamaquoddy Bay on the border between the United States and the British province of New Brunswick in what is now Canada. Porgey's commander, (acting) Lieutenant James (or John) Flintoph, seems to have landed himself in considerable legal trouble as a result and soon after left the service.^{[2][Note 1]} In June at Passamaquoddy, Maine, he fired on the town, endangering children playing on the green, searched shipping in the harbour, impressed some sailors, and shot away the rigging of a schooner at anchor.^[3]

In 1809 Porgey was in the North Sea and came under the command of Lieutenant Hugh Gould. Porgey and her sister schooners Cuckoo and Pilchard were at the unsuccessful Walcheren Expedition, which took place between 30 July and 9 August 1809.^[4] Between December 1809 and March 1810 she was in Sheerness undergoing repairs.^[1]

Fate

On 4 June 1810 Porgey grounded under enemy fire in the Scheldt estuary while going to the assistance of the hired armed cutter Idas. Lieutenant Gould had Porgey's crew take to her boats and then set fire to her before he left.^{[5][6][Note 2]}

Footnotes

Notes

1. Flintoph's spelling was variable. He described his vessel as "His majesty's armed schooner Pogge".
2. Porgey did not, as is sometimes recorded, founder in the West Indies in 1812.

Citations

1. Winfield (2008), p.359.
2. State papers and publick documents of the United States, from the accession of George Washington to the presidency, exhibiting a complete view of our foreign relations since that time ... (1819), (Boston:Thomas B. Wait), p.13 & 16-7.
3. Smith (1980), p.563.
4. The London Gazette: no. 16650. p. 1971. 26 September 1812.
5. Hepper (1994), p.132.
6. Gossett (1986), p.75.

References

• Gossett, William Patrick (1986) The lost ships of the Royal Navy, 1793-1900. (London:Mansell). ISBN 0-7201-1816-6
• Hepper, David J. (1994) British Warship Losses in the Age of Sail, 1650-1859. (Rotherfield: Jean Boudriot). ISBN 0-948864-30-3
• Smith, Joshua M. (2007) Borderland Smuggling: Patriots, Loyalists, and Smuggling in the Northeast, 1783-1820 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida).
• Smith, Page (1980) The shaping of America: a people's history of the young Republic. (McGraw-Hill).
• Winfield, Rif (2008). British Warships in the Age of Sail 1793–1817: Design, Construction, Careers and Fates. Seaforth. ISBN 1-86176-246-1.