Colonial Despatches

HMS Ganges was the the last sailing ship-of-the-line that the Royal Navy would ever commission to service abroad, and a transcribed minute in this despatch from 1858 notes that Ad. Baines would himself leave Callao for Vancouver [Island] the 28th of August in his Flag ship, to bolster all adequate naval support to that important part of H.M. Dominions.1

Ganges, launched in 1821, was the first ship built in the Ganges, or Formidable, class of vessels.2 Its design was based on the captured French prize-ship Canopus, which Walbran notes as the handsomest and swiftest ship in the British Navy.3

Ganges was roughly 60 m long, carried 84 guns and 700 men, and while it was in the Salish Sea it helped comprise a formidable British naval presence, which is illustrated in the minutes of this despatch from 8 August 1860.4

• 1. G. P. V. Akrigg and H. B. Akrigg, British Columbia Chronicle, 1847-1871 (Victoria: Discovery Press, 1977), 134.
• 2. David Lyon and Rif Winfield, The Sail & Steam Navy List (London: Chatham Publishing, 2004), 95.
• 3. John T. Walbran, British Columbia Coast Names (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1971), 199.
• 4. David Lyon and Rif Winfield, The Sail & Steam Navy List (London: Chatham Publishing, 2004), 95.