HMS Trent

Named after the River Trent, HMS Trent has been a name held by many British warships, including:

• HMS Trent, frigate, captained by John Lindsay during the capture of Havana in 1762
• HMS Trent, commanded by a young John Franklin on a northern voyage as far as Spitzbergen in 1818.
• HMS Trent, 17-gun sloop, ordered in November 1860 as one of the Perseus class, selected for conversion to an ironclad, renamed HMS Research.
• The mail steamer HMS Trent which was in November 1861 carrying Confederate Commissioners James Mason and John Slidell to England during the American Civil War, when she was boarded by Capt. Charles Wilkes of the Union Navy in the Bahamas and her passengers seized. Owing to strenuous British protests, Pres. Lincoln was later obliged to release them. Wilkes had previously best been known as the able but cantankerous commander of the U.S. Exploring Expedition of 1838-1842, the first government-sponsored American exploring mission outside the continental United States, which explored parts of the Pacific and Antarctic regions.
• HMS Trent (K243), River class frigate, transferred to the Royal Indian Navy April 1946 and renamed Kurki, later renamed Investigator and made into a survey vessel. [1]