HMS Dolphin

Numerous Royal Navy vessels have been named HMS Dolphin after the dolphin.

HMS Dolphin (shore establishment)

The seventeenth Royal Navy 'ship' to be named HMS Dolphin was the RN shore establishment sited at Fort Blockhouse in Gosport. Dolphin was the home of the Royal Navy Submarine Service from 1904 to 1999, and location of the Royal Navy Submarine School.

Closure of submarine base

HMS Dolphin closed as a submarine base on 30 September 1998, although the last RN submarine permanently based at Gosport was HMS Ursula which had left 4 years earlier in 1994. The Royal Navy Submarine School (RNSMS) remained at Dolphin until 23 December 1999 when it closed prior to relocation to HMS Raleigh. The RNSMS staff marched into HMS Raleigh and were welcomed onboard by Commodore Lockwood on 31 January 2000. The RNSMS is located in the Dolphin and Astute blocks at Raleigh, although the Submarine Escape Training Tank (SETT), a 30m deep tank of water used to instruct all RN submariners in pressurised escape, remains at the same site, now renamed Fort Blockhouse.

Submarine museum

HMS Dolphin (1813)

HMS Dolphin was the 12-gun American privateer schooner Dolphin Admiral John Borlase Warren's squadron captured on 13 April 1813 and took into service. As HMS Dolphin she participated in boat actions on 29 April and 5 May 1813 for which the Royal Navy issued a clasp for the Naval General Service Medal. Her ultimate fate is currently undocumented.

Privateer

Dolphin had been an American privateer and had carried Baltimore's privateering commission No. 2. Under Captain W.S. Stafford, on 26 July 1812 she captured a British vessel valued at US$18,000, and in August she captured the schooner Fanny, valued at a similar amount. In the same month she captured the schooner James, which she sent into port, and destroyed several doggers. Next she captured and sent into Baltimore the John Hamilton, of 10 guns and 30 men, laden with several hundred tons of mahogany.

She had had an unsuccessful cruise of two months before on 25 January 1813 she captured the Hebe, of 16 guns and 25 men and the brig Three Brothers of ten guns and 25 men. These two vessels, though heavily armed, had too few crew to man even a broadside. Captain W.A. Brigham of Hebe was wounded by a musket ball and later injured by a powder explosion. Dolphin had four men wounded and the British 10, including Brigham. The British recaptured Hebe before she could reach America.Dolphin returned to Baltimore on 13 February.