HMS Janus was a 44-gun fifth-rate Roebuck-class ship of the Royal Navy. While participating in the American Revolutionary War, the ship joined the Jamaica Station in 1779. Employed patrolling the West Indies, Janus fought an action off the coast of Monte Cristi in March 1780 in which her squadron was chased away from a French convoy by its escorts. Horatio Nelson was given command of Janus in May, but never took the ship to sea as he was ill with malaria. Janus returned to Britain in September 1782; while the ship was undergoing a refit in March 1783 her crew mutinied over concerns they were not going to be paid off.
Janus was converted into a storeship and renamed Dromedary in 1788. With the French Revolutionary Wars underway, the ship returned to the West Indies and took part in the invasion of Martinique in February 1794. By 1797 the ship was stationed in the Mediterranean, where she became known for incompetence amongst her officers and crew, resulting in her captain being dismissed by a court-martial.
Dromedary was travelling from Grenada to Trinidad on 10 August 1800 with urgent reinforcements for the garrison there. Sailing through the Bocas del Dragón in the evening, the wind dropped away and the strong current pushed Dromedary onto the rocks off Huevos, wrecking her. The 500 crew and passengers on board all survived. After they had disembarked on to the rocks, the ship fell on to her side and broke in half. The crew was subsequently deemed not to be at fault for the loss of Dromedary.
Design Janus was a 44-gun, 18-pounder . The class was a revival of the design used to construct the fifth-rate HMS Roebuck in 1769, by Sir Thomas Slade. The ships, while classified as fifth-rates, were not frigates because they carried two gun decks, of which a frigate would have only one. Roebuck was designed as such to provide the extra firepower a ship of two decks could bring to warfare but with a much lower draught and smaller profile. From 1751 to 1776 only two ships of this type were built for the Royal Navy because it was felt that they were anachronistic, with the lower (and more heavily armed) deck of guns being so low as to be unusable in anything but the calmest of waters. In the 1750s the cruising role of the 44-gun two deck ship was taken over by new 32- and 36-gun frigates, leaving the type almost completely obsolete.
When the American Revolutionary War began in 1775 a need was found for heavily armed ships that could fight in the shallow coastal waters of North America, where two-decked third-rates could not safely sail, and so the Roebuck class of nineteen ships, alongside the similar Adventure class, was ordered to the specifications of the original ships to fill this need. The frigate classes that had overtaken the 44-gun ship as the preferred design for cruisers were at this point still mostly armed with 9- and 12-pounder guns, and it was expected that the class's heavier 18-pounders would provide them with an advantage over these vessels. Frigates with larger armaments would go on to be built by the Royal Navy later on in the American Revolutionary War, but these ships were highly expensive and so Janus and her brethren continued to be built as a cheaper alternative.
Construction Janus, as the fourth ship built to the design, closely followed the parameters as originally set out for Roebuck in 1769 while later ships of the class differed from the design. While Janus and the other early ships of the class had two levels of stern windows, there was only ever one level of cabins behind them.
All but one ship of the class were contracted out to civilian dockyards for construction, and the contract for Janus was given to Robert Batson at Limehouse. The ship was ordered on 24 July 1776, laid down on 9 August the same year and launched on 14 May 1778 with the following dimensions: along the gun deck, at the keel, with a beam of and a depth in the hold of . Her draught, which made the class so valued in the American Revolutionary War, was forward and aft. She measured 883 tons burthen. The fitting out process for Janus was completed on 11 August at Deptford Dockyard. Her construction and fitting out cost in total £18,096.
Janus received an armament of twenty 18-pounder long guns on her lower deck, with twenty-two 9-pounders on the upper deck. These were complemented by two 6-pounders on the forecastle; the quarterdeck was unarmed. The ship was to have a crew of 280 men, which was increased to 300 in 1783. She was named on 27 August 1776 after the mythological two-headed keeper of the portals of heaven, Janus.
Service Convoys & Jamaica Janus was commissioned in June 1778 under the command of Captain Bonovier Glover, while completion was still underway. As this was coming to an end, on 23 August a small boat became entangled with Janus; it capsized, drowning two men. Januss first task in commission was to escort a convoy of merchant ships to Denmark. They departed on 11 September and arrived at Helsingør on 18 September. The ship then made the return journey with another convoy, leaving on 27 September and reaching the Downs via Gothenburg on 2 October. The ship then joined a squadron of ships under Commodore Joshua Rowley, which sailed from Britain on 26 December as reinforcements for the Jamaica Station. Bad weather forced Janus to shelter at Torbay, eventually making sail for Jamaica on 2 January 1779.
Janus arrived at Jamaica on 22 March, and commenced a period of routine patrols around the island. Fears were rife that the French fleet would invade Jamaica, and in August Janus was allocated to a force guarding the capital Kingston. Along with three other ships she was placed in a line across the entrance to the harbour, stretching out from Fort Charles. If an attack was too great for them to defend, it was planned that they would retreat towards Fort Augusta where there were further defences. Later in the month the French fleet sailed away from the area and the invasion fears lessened, allowing the ships to leave their defensive positions. Janus resumed her patrols.
Action off Monte Cristi From 10 October Janus began patrolling off the coast of Haiti in company with the 64-gun ship of the line HMS Lion and 50-gun fourth-rate HMS Bristol. Under the overall command of Captain William Cornwallis, after several months of uneventful service, reports came in that a French convoy would be arriving at Cap-Français from Martinique. By 15 March 1780 the three ships were operating close to Cap-Français, intending to intercept the convoy.
On 19 March the ships located the convoy off Monte Cristi as it made for Cap-Français. The merchant ships were escorted by a squadron under the command of Toussaint-Guillaume Picquet de la Motte, with three ships of the line, a fourth-rate, and a frigate. Picquet de la Motte ordered the merchant ships to sail for Cap-Français, while he headed off the three vessels.
With the British outnumbered, a chase began; at 5 p.m. Picquet de la Motte's flagship, the 74-gun ship of the line Annibal, began firing at the British ships ahead, and was able to continue this distant fire until about midnight, continuing when daylight returned. Janus received most of the fire from Annibal, having parts of her mizzen and foremast shot away. Through the night the wind lessened considerably, and Lion and Bristol began towing Janus with their small boats to keep her speed up. Glover died below decks, unable to leave his cot, of natural causes at about 3 a.m. Picquet de la Motte's other ships got into range during the day.
Annibal was ahead of the other vessels, and at one point on 21 March the three British ships almost surrounded her; Janus got behind the ship of the line and was able to fire into her stern, causing considerable damage, but Annibal took advantage of a breeze to get back to the cover of the other French ships. The chase continued into 22 March, and by 6:30 a.m. the French were about an hour away from overtaking the British. At this point however reinforcements came for the British, when the 64-gun ship of the line HMS Ruby, 28-gun frigate HMS Pomona, and 32-gun frigate HMS Niger came into sight. Picquet de la Motte ended his chase and sailed back to Cap-Français.
Apart from Glover, Janus had two men killed and three wounded in the engagement. Temporary command of the ship off Monte Cristi had gone to Lieutenant George Hopewell Stephens, the first lieutenant, and after the action Lions first lieutenant, Lieutenant James Cornwallis, was sent across as acting captain. Stephens angered William Cornwallis when he reported Glover's death to him after the battle. The two captains had been friends; prior to the battle there had been some concern over Glover's abilities, and Cornwallis had wanted him to be at least carried from his cot to die on the quarterdeck. Janus returned to Jamaica on 24 March and went into the dockyard to have her battle damage repaired.
Nelson's captaincy
Captain Horatio Nelson was appointed to the ship in May. Janus was at the time at Port Royal, Jamaica, having completed her repairs and now preparing for sea. Nelson, however, was suffering badly from malaria and arrived in the port on 17 May emaciated and having to be carried ashore. He was strong enough to visit Janus for the first time on 25 May, but did little more with the ship.
Janus stayed in harbour; in the space of three months at Port Royal forty-eight members of the crew used this opportunity to desert. Nelson, believing himself in recovery, took day-to-day command of Janus in June, but soon relapsed and was taken ashore for further treatment. Sent back to Britain at his own request, he was replaced temporarily by Lieutenant Manley Dixon on 15 August. Nelson never took Janus to sea. On 17 August Janus resumed her patrols at sea. At Rockfort on 20 September Captain William Henry King O'Hara took over command of Janus, but routine for the ship remained unchanged, with patrols through the West Indies. This continued until late August 1781 when the ship sailed as escort to a convoy headed for North America, reaching Sandy Hook on 8 October.
North America Janus remained at New York until she sailed on 14 December 1781 with several other warships as escort to a convoy. The weather deteriorated, until on 17 December the ship's mainmast broke in half and she also lost part of her mizzenmast. Janus quickly lost sight of the convoy; with the pumps unable to contend with the amount of water entering the ship, the crew lightened ship by throwing the two forecastle guns overboard. By 18 December the weather had worsened, Janus was still taking in water and she had received more damage to her masts. Half of the crew were employed in working pumps. In order to further lighten the ship, the bow anchors were removed, and went over the side along with eighteen of the 9-pounders and twelve of the 18-pounders. These extreme actions proved successful, and the ship was able to return to a regular level of pumping. Janus continued on, with rigging being repaired and holes plugged as she sailed. She arrived at Antigua on 8 January 1782; the crew was exhausted, and sixty men were loaned from the 74-gun ship of the line HMS Royal Oak to get the ship safely in to harbour.
Repairs were undertaken at English Harbour, with Janus finally able to depart on 24 May. Having spent time patrolling and chasing smugglers off St Lucia, on 2 August the ship sailed as escort to a convoy headed to Britain. They arrived at Portsmouth on 30 September. Janus received a refit at Portsmouth Dockyard between October and December. A further refit began at Portsmouth in March 1783.
Portsmouth mutiny