Colonial Despatches

The HMS Scylla, a 1331-tonne corvette that possessed a twenty-one-gun armament at its launch in June 1856; however, the Royal Navy appears to have reduced its armament to sixteen.1

The vessel was part of the Royal Navy's “Flying Squadron”, which, in May of 1870, resided for a period at Esquimalt that, at the time, was described as Esquimalt's finest hour as a British naval base.2

• 1. Peter Davis, HMS Scylla (1856), The Victorian Royal Navy (website). http://www.pdavis.nl/ShowShip.php?id=130
• 2. G. P. V. Akrigg and H. B. Akrigg, British Columbia Chronicle, 1847-1871 (Victoria: Discovery Press, 1977), 390-391.