Pictured: a built model of this ship — not the historical vessel.

HM Cutter Cheerful (1806)

Type

Cutter

Period

19th Century

Nation

Great Britain

Overview: HM Cutter Cheerful was a 12-gun Cheerful-class cutter of the Royal Navy, designed by Surveyor of the Navy Sir John Henslow and launched in 1806. She is one of the most popular age-of-sail subjects in the scale-modeling world thanks to the Syren Ship Model Company (Chuck Passaro) kit and plan set built around her, which has spawned dozens of build logs on Model Ship World and other forums. Specifications: As a Cheerful-class cutter (sister ship HMS Surly's figures are representative of the class), she measured about 63 feet on the gundeck with a 46 ft 9 in keel, a beam of 23 ft 6 in, and a depth of hold of 10 feet, on a burthen of roughly 137 tons. She carried 12 guns — 2 long 4-pounders and 10 twelve-pounder carronades — with a complement of about 50 men. The Syren Ship Model Company offers plans and a plank-on-bulkhead build package for her at 1:48 (1/4-inch) scale. Service History: Cheerful fitted out at Sheerness Dockyard from November 1806, and in September 1807 she captured the privateer Rarkebonde. She sailed for Portugal in January 1808 and to the Baltic in 1809, undertook a middling repair at Sheerness in 1812–1813, and was eventually sold out of the service at Deptford in July 1816 for £350. Notable Facts: The Syren Ship Model Company's monograph for the kit notes that Cheerful was chosen as a subject partly because two related contemporary models exist for reference — one of her sister ship Surly in the Art Gallery of Ontario's Thomson Collection, and another, less certainly identified, cutter model in the Rogers Collection at the U.S. Naval Academy Museum in Annapolis. Confusingly, the Royal Navy reused the name "Cheerful" for later vessels, including an 1856 gunboat, an 1897 destroyer, and a 1944 Algerine-class minesweeper, none related to this 1806 cutter.