HMS Childers was a Royal Navy 18-gun Cruizer-class brig-sloop that Nicholas Diddams built at Portsmouth Dockyard and launched in 1812. She was broken up in 1822.
Royal Navy service
Commander Buckland Bluett commissioned Childers in July 1812.[1] When news of the outbreak of the War of 1812 reached Britain, the Royal Navy seized all American vessels then in British ports. Childers was among the 42 Royal Navy vessels then lying at Spithead or Portsmouth and so entitled to share in the grant for the American ships Belleville, Janus, Aeos, Ganges and Leonidas seized there on 31 July 1812.[2][a]
Commander John Bedford replaced Bluett in August and sailed for the Leeward Islands on 29 September.[1] On 3 November she captured the American schooner Snapper, along with Acasta, Aeolus and Maidstone.[4]Snapper was a privateer of 172 tons, out of Philadelphia. She carried 11 guns and had a crew of 90 men under the command of Captain J. Green.[5][b] That same day Childers captured the brig Isabella, which was sailing from New York to Puerto Rico.[4] Some six weeks later, on 16 December, Childers captured the brig Baltimore, which was on her way to Bermuda.[4]
From December 1813 onwards, she was under Commander John Brand Umfreville.[1] In September 1814, she took part in the first, unsuccessful attack on Fort Bowyer.[c] For much of the autumn, Carron was at Pensacola, until General Andrew Jackson's numerically superior forces expelled the British in the battle of Pensacola at the start of November 1814.
n 27 January 1815 Childers left Nassau, Bahamas, escorting a convoy to Britain.[11]
Commander Richard Wales assumed command in October 1815, in the Leeward Islands. Lieutenant Edward W. Corry Astley (acting) assumed command in September 1816 while Wales was ill, giving up command on Wales's return. During Astley's command, yellow fever attacked the crew of Childers, forcing him to bring her into English Harbour, Antigua, with only 15 men available for duty.[12] According to The Naval Chronicle, within a month she lost over 35 officers and men dead from fever.[13]
In January 1817 Commander Amos Freeman Westropp assumed command.[1]
Fate
Childers was broken up at Chatham on 7 March 1822.[1]
Notes
^A first-class share was worth £20 19s 0d; a sixth-class share, that of an ordinary seaman, was worth 4s 1d; the Commander in Chief received £230 10s 8d.[3]
^A first-class share of the prize money was worth £20 8s 11d; a sixth-class share was worth 2s 11d.[6]
^Arsene Latour mistakenly named Anaconda as the fourth vessel present during the Battle of Fort Bowyer,[7] rather than Childers, and this error has persisted in some accounts.[8][9] James, in mentioning the many inaccuracies of Latour's book in relation to the failed attack on Fort Bowyer, does refer to Latour 'misnaming one vessel'.[10]
^"Niles' National Register, volume 7". 22 October 1814. p. 93. Letter from Jackson to the US Secretary of War dated 17 September 1814: 'The ship, which was destroyed, was the Hermes...the brig so considerably damaged is the Sophie...The other ship was the Carron...the other brig's name unknown.'
^Eaton and Van Crowninshield Smith (1834), pp. 174–176.
Eaton, John Henry, and Jerome Van Crowninshield Smith (1834) Memoirs of Andrew Jackson: late major general and commander in chief of the Southern division of the army of the United States. (Philadelphia)
James, William (1818) A Full and Correct Account of the Military Occurrences of the Late War Between Great Britain and the United States of America. (London, Printed for the Author). ISBN0-665-35743-5.
Latour, Arsène Lacarrière (1816) Historical memoir of the war in West Florida and Louisiana in 1814-15. (Philadelphia: John Conrad & Co)
Lossing, Benson J. (1869) Pictorial Field-Book of the War of 1812.
United Kingdom