HMS Calypso

The following ships of the Royal Navy were assigned the name Calypso, after Calypso, a sea nymph in Greek mythology:

HMS Calypso (1883)

HMS Calypso was a corvette (designated as a third-class cruiser from 1887) of the Royal Navy and the name ship of her class. Built for distant cruising in the heyday of the British Empire, she served as a warship and training vessel until 1922, when she was sold.

As originally classified as a screw corvette,Calypso was one of the Royal Navy’s last sailing corvettes. She supplemented her extensive sail rig with a powerful engine. Among the first of the smaller cruisers to be given steel hulls, instead of iron, she nevertheless was cased with timber and coppered below the water line, as were wooden ships.

Unlike her more famous sister Calliope, Calypso had a quiet career, consisting mainly of training cruises in the Atlantic Ocean. In 1902 she was sent to the colony of Newfoundland, where she served as a training vessel for the Newfoundland Royal Naval Reserve before and during the First World War. In 1922 she was declared surplus and sold, then used as a storage hulk. Her hull still exists, awash in a coastal bay off Newfoundland.

HMS Calypso (1805)

HMS Calypso was a Royal Navy Cruizer-class brig-sloop. She was built at Deptford Wharf between 1804 and 1805, and launched in 1805. She served in the North Sea and the Baltic, most notably at the Battle of Lyngør, which effectively ended the Gunboat War. Calypso was eventually broken up in March 1821.

Service

Commander Matthew Foster commissioned Calypso and in February she was in the Downs. On 14 June 1805 Calypso and a large number of other British warships were in company when the gun-brig Basilisk captured the American ship Enoch. Between 18 and 23 July 1805, she participated in attacks on French convoys off Calais, Wimereux, and Ambleteuse.

On 18 July, Calypso, Fleche (Captain Thomas White), and the 20-gun sixth-rate post ship Arab (Captain Kieth Maxwell) and two or three gun-brigs drove on shore six French gun-vessels. However, the bank off Cape Grinez, and the shot and shells from the right face of its powerful battery, soon compelled the British to haul off from the shore. Arab suffered seven wounded and a great deal of damage. Fleche was the closest inshore owing to her light draft of water; she had five men severely wounded and damage to her rigging. Forster received a severe shoulder wound and had to give up command of Calypso.