HMS Amethyst, 1844-1869
Amethyst was a sixth-rate Royal Navy ship, commanded by Captain Sidney Grenfell during her time in the Pacific.1 It was involved in the second Anglo-Chinese War, or Opium War.2
In this 1858 despatch, Douglas acknowledges with satisfaction that the Amethyst is on route, with the Tribune and Pylades, from the East Indies to Vancouver Island, with a compliment of “Supernumerary Marines” aboard.
The Amethyst carried 26 guns, was 40 m long, 12.5 m wide, and built at Plymouth dockyard; the Navy sold it for use as a cable vessel in 1869.3
  • 1. Peter Davis, HMS Amethyst (1844), The Victorian Royal Navy (website). http://www.pdavis.nl/ShowShip.php?id=1054
  • 2. Ibid.
  • 3. J. J. Colledge, Ships of the Royal Navy (Devon: David & Charles: Newton Abbot, 1969), 1:39.
Mentions of this vessel in the documents