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Nautilus, 1784
Type: Sloop ; Armament 16
Launched : 1784 ;
Disposal date or year : 2 Feb 1799 : Wrecked off Flamborough Head : crew saved. Capt. Henry Gunter.
Notes:
Portsmouth 28 Jan 1785 Remains at Spithead.
Portsmouth 24 Apr 1785 Sailed for Plymouth.
Portsmouth 2 May 1785 Arrived from Plymouth.
Portsmouth 11 May 1785 Sailed for Plymouth.
Portsmouth 16 May 1785 Arrived from Plymouth.
Plymouth 20 May 1785 Sailed on a cruise.
Portsmouth 27 Jun 1785 Sailed on a cruise.
Plymouth 28 Jun 1785 Arrived from Portsmouth.
Plymouth 19 Nov 1785 Arrived from Bristol.
12 Apr 1793, Troops embarked at Barbadoes, on board the Trusty, 18-gun sloop Nautilus, Hind armed schooner, and Hero merchant-ship, 14th, arrived in Great Courland Bay, Tobago and the troops landed. Following the failure of the local commander to surrender the British troops attacked and carried the fort.
2 Feb 1794 Vice-admiral Sir John Jervis sailed from Barbadoes with a fleet, including the Nautilus, for Martinique. Seamen from many of the ships played an important role in moving heavy guns over difficult terrain and in the various assaults required to subdue the Island. Elements from the fleet then went on to take Sainte-Lucie, Guadeloupe, and other islands, in subsequent months.
March and April 1794, operations at the Islands of Martinique, St. Lucia, and Guadaloupe.
5 Jun - 3 Jul 1794 the arrival of a French squadron in the resulted in a number of movements and operations by the ships Boyne, Veteran, Winchelsea, Nautilus, Vanguard, Vengeance, Solebay and Winchelsea.
May 1797 Nautilus and others captured the French privateer Adolph.
The following appeared in the London Gazette : www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/14017/pages/535
Extract of a Letter from Captain Gunter, Commander of His Majesty's Sloop Nautilus, to Evan Nepean, Esq; dated at Sea, 24 May 1797.
I Beg you will be pleased to inform the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty of the Capture of the Adolphe French Lugger Privateer, after being chaced Four Hours by His Majesty's Sloops Nautilus and Sea-Gull, and previously started from under the Land, and chaced by His Majesty's Hired Cutter the King George.
She had been out Nine Days from Boulogne ; she is quite new, had taken nothing, this being her first Cruize, pierced for Twelve Guns, Part of which she threw overboard in the Chace, had only Five on Board when taken, and Eight Swivels, with Thirty-five Men.
12 Jun 1797 Nautilus and Fox captured the French privateer Syrene off Fleckery, in Norway,.
12 Jun 1797 Nautilus and Fox captured the Dutch privateer lugger Brutal, 6 guns, 32 men, off Fleckery, in Norway.
2 Jul 1797 in company with others captured the Dutch privateer De Kleyne Sperver, 6 guns, 28 men, off the Scaw.
4 Apr 1798 Nautilus and Narcissus captured the French privateer Legere in the North Sea.
15 Feb 1799, Hull, early in November the Nautilus sailed from Elsineur, in company with L'Unite frigate and a large convoy : the fleet was obliged to put into Mendal, in Norway, where the Hound brig was then lying. Captain Shield, of L'Unite, the commanding officer, ordered the Hound to England, and directed Captain Gunter to remain on that coast, for the purpose of collecting any vessels that might be separated from the homeward bound Baltic fleets. After considerable trouble for near three months, the : Nautilus assembled twenty-two sail at Christiansand, with which number she had nearly reached the Humber at the time she was wrecked. This unfortunate event happened on Saturday the 2d inst. off Speeton Cliff, on the south side of Filey Bay. The ship touched ground about six o'clock in the morning. The violence of the storm was so great, and the difficulty of seeing the land such, from the incessant drifts of snow, that she was in the midst of the breakers, on a lee shore, before her real situation could be discovered. Two attempts were made to clear the land on each tack, by standing to the northward and southward, but without success. In a few minutes after this, finding she touched, and every possibility of getting off being lost, the best means were taken to lay her in a good situation for preserving the lives of every body on board ; this was happily effected in the course of two hours, to the astonishment of the people on the coast who were competent judges of the difficulty of accomplishing it under the circumstances in which the Nautilus was placed.
1 - 2 May 1800 prize money resulting from the operations at the Islands of Martinique, St. Lucia, and Guadaloupe due for payment. www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/15245/pages/339