HMS Trincomalee (1817)

Type

Frigate

Period

19th Century

Nation

Great Britain

Overview: HMS Trincomalee is a Leda-class 38-gun frigate built for the Royal Navy shortly after the Napoleonic Wars, ordered in 1812 but not launched until 1817 due to wartime delays. She is one of the oldest floating ships in the world and, alongside her near-sister HMS Unicorn in Dundee, one of only two surviving British frigates of this era, now preserved as a museum ship in Hartlepool, England. Specifications: As built she measured roughly 150 ft on the gundeck with a 39 ft 11 in beam and displaced around 1,065 tons burthen, carrying 38 guns (rated up to 46 once carronades were counted) split between 18-pounders on the gundeck and 32-pounder carronades plus 9-pounders on the quarterdeck and forecastle. Unusually for a Royal Navy ship of the period, she was built not of oak but of Malabar teak by the Wadia family of shipwrights at the East India Company's Bombay shipyard, a choice driven by oak shortages in Britain during the Napoleonic shipbuilding boom. Service History: After a long delay sailing to Britain, she spent 26 years laid up "in ordinary" at Portsmouth before being recommissioned; she was later cut down and re-rigged as a smaller corvette-type vessel for active service including anti-slavery patrols in the West Indies and duty with the Pacific Squadron. She ended her Royal Navy service as a training and drill ship, was sold in 1897, renamed Foudroyant, and used for decades as an accommodation, training, and holiday ship before being restored to her original 1817 configuration and opened as a museum ship in Hartlepool. Notable Facts: Trincomalee's original construction plans were lost when they were being carried aboard HMS Java, which was sunk in battle by USS Constitution, forcing a second set of plans to be sent out to India. Her teak construction has proven remarkably durable, contributing to her survival as one of the world's oldest afloat warships, and her later renaming and career under the name Foudroyant adds an interesting identity twist for modelers researching her history.