HMS gangesGanges
HMS gangesGanges 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 the gangesGanges,
to bolster all adequate naval support to that important part of H.M. Dominions.
1
gangesGanges, launched in 1821, was the first ship built in the gangesGanges, 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
The 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.