HMS Sparkler (1797)

HMS Sparkler was a gun-brig of the British Royal Navy in service at the end of the French Revolutionary Wars and the start of the Napoleonic Wars.[1]

History
United Kingdom
Name: HMS Sparkler
Launched: 1797
In service: April 1797 (As Gunboat No. 7)[1]
Out of service: 18 April 1802[1]
General characteristics
Complement: 50[1]
Armament: 12 guns[1]

Originally named Gunboat No. 7,[1] she was renamed HMS Sparkler in August 1797. The ship had an inauspicious start, with her surgeon being court-martialled in June 1800 for mutiny and sentenced to two years' jail in Marshalsea Prison, and her captain, William Walker, dismissed from the Royal Navy in July 1800 for a range of offences including theft of provisions and covering up crew desertions.[1]

In company with other Royal Navy sloops and gun-vessels drove two French sloops ashore at Grandcamp Bay in Northern France on 19 Aug 1800, and destroyed them.[1] A dispatch dated 11 September 1800 credits the ship, along with the cutter HMS Dolphin, HMS Champion, HMS Bouncer in destroying two more French sloops on 9 September 1800.[1] The ship assisted capturing a French privateer, Victoire, during a shore bombardment near La-Hogue on 15 September 1800.[1][2]

She joined Admiral Hyde Parker's North Sea Fleet at Yarmouth in March 1801 and operated as part of the fleet in the Baltic Sea, returning to Yarmouth in July 1801, after which she returned to military operations in the English Channel.[1] Following the Treaty of Amiens, the ship was offered for sale on 9 September 1802.[1]

References
  1. "Sparkler, late Gunboat No. 7 , 1797". Ancestry.com. Retrieved 21 October 2017.
  2. "No. 15294". The London Gazette. 16 September 1800. p. 1062.
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