The colonial despatches of Vancouver Island and British Columbia 1846-1871
HMS Calypso, 1845-1866
The Calypso was a sixth-rate Royal Navy ship commanded by Captain Frederick Byng Montresor in
the Pacific Station.1 It was built at Chatham Dockyard, had 20 guns, and was 37 m long by 11 m wide.2
This 1858 despatch requests that the Calypso be employed in the military response to the murder of 42 miners, at the hands of, apparently, Indigenous men, at Fraser River. And, in another correspondence in the same year, the Calypso is ordered to Vancouver Island to re-provision the Satellite and Plumper.