HMS Proserpine (1777)
_wrecked.jpg) Escape of the crew of the HMS Proserpine after being stranded on the Scharhörn Reef |
|
| Overview | |
|---|---|
| Type | frigate |
| Shipyard |
John Barnard, Harwich |
| Order | May 14, 1777 |
| Keel laying | June 1776 |
| Launch | July 7, 1777 |
| 1. Period of service |
|
| Commissioning | 23 September 1777 (Sheerness Dockyard) |
| Whereabouts | Stranded on February 1, 1799 on the Scharhörn Reef in the Outer Elbe , later carried away by ice and finally stranded off Baltrum. |
| Technical specifications | |
| displacement |
595 37 ⁄ 94 bm |
| length |
36.73 m (30.18 m keel) |
| width |
10.2 m |
| Draft |
3.35 m |
| crew |
200 |
| Armament |
28 cannons |
The HMS Proserpine was an Enterprise- class frigate of the British Navy that was launched in 1777 and stranded off Cuxhaven in 1799 .
history
The Proserpine was commissioned in 1777 under the command of Captain Evelyn Sutton and put into service in the same year.
Stranding
On Monday, January 28, 1799, the Proserpine set out from Yarmouth for Cuxhaven under the command of Captain Wallis. Among other things, Thomas Grenville was on board, who was on an important diplomatic mission during the Second Coalition War on the way to Berlin to see Friedrich Wilhelm III. was. After taking on a pilot at Heligoland , she set course for the Elbe estuary on Thursday, where she ran onto the Scharhörn Reef on Friday morning, February 1, 1799, in strong winds and ice . Attempts to free the ship failed and Grenville suggested evacuating across the ice to Neuwerk Island, six miles away . The last group left the ship on Saturday afternoon and reached the island on the same day. 14 of the 187 people on board died, including a woman and a child.
Thomas Grenville and his fellow officers were brought to Cuxhaven on February 6th by the Neuwerkers and traveled on to Berlin via Hamburg. In the days that followed, the wreck, which had since broken, was visited several times to retrieve bread. A group of five crew members was surprised by the flood on February 10, 1799 and had to spend one night in the wreck. The flood that followed and the ice drift released the crushed ship from the bottom. The thick ice held the remains of the ship together enough that a few days later it ran aground off Baltrum and the group was able to save themselves. The wreck remained at Baltrum and was looted despite protests.
Footnotes
- ↑ Dr. F. Voigt, "From the foreign book of the Thurm zu Neuwerk", communications of the Association for Hamburg History Volume 10 (1888) p. 127, Association for Hamburg History
- ↑ Report on the loss of the frigate Proserpine to Vice Admiral Dickson , in “The Navel Chronicle, Vol 1.”, p. 332ff.
- ^ "Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy between 1793 and 1857" , Willim OS Gilly, London, 1864, p. 11ff.
- ↑ Neue Reiseabentheuer, Volume 2 , Christian August Fischer, 1802, pp. 179ff