HMS Hebrus was a 36-gun Scamander-class frigate of the Royal Navy. Constructed in response to the start of the War of 1812, Hebrus was commissioned in October 1813 under Captain Edmund Palmer. Serving initially in the English Channel, on 27 March 1814 the frigate fought at the Battle of Jobourg during which she captured the French 40-gun frigate Étoile in a single-ship action. Hebrus was subsequently transferred to serve in North America. She participated in the expedition up the Patuxent River in August which resulted in the destruction of the Chesapeake Bay Flotilla, and Palmer was also present at the Battle of Bladensburg.
Hebrus fought at the Battle of Baltimore in September as part of the squadron bombarding Fort McHenry and subsequently served off the coast of Georgia in the command of Rear-Admiral George Cockburn, being present at the capture of Cumberland Island and Battle of Fort Peter in January 1815. Hebrus returned to Britain in May carrying the body of Captain Sir Peter Parker for burial in London. In the Hundred Days campaign she was then employed off Bordeaux working to support French Royalists.
In the peace after the Napoleonic Wars Hebrus was part of the Cork Station before in July 1816 she joined Admiral Lord Exmouth's fleet that in August bombarded Algiers. After this the ship was surveyed and found to be extremely rotten. Hebrus was paid off in November and eventually sold in April 1817.
Design and construction Hebrus was a 36-gun, 18-pounder Scamander-class frigate. The class was constructed as part of the reaction of Lord Melville's Admiralty to the beginning of the War of 1812. This new theatre of operations, with the Napoleonic Wars ongoing, was expected to put a strain on the existing fleet of Royal Navy frigates, and so more were needed to be built. Designed by the Surveyor of the Navy, Sir William Rule, the Scamander class was one of those put into construction to fill this need. The class was a variant of the existing Apollo-class frigate, which had been the standard design for 36-gun frigates in the Royal Navy for over a decade. The class was particularly copied from the lines of the 36-gun frigate HMS Euryalus.
The war was expected to only be a short affair, and so ships built specifically for it were not designed for long service lives. As such Hebruss class was ordered to be constructed out of the soft but easily available "fir". In actual fact this meant the use of red and yellow pine. Using pine for construction meant that the usually long period of time between keel laying and launching could be dramatically decreased to as little as three months. Pine-built ships could usually be differentiated from those of oak by their flat "square tuck" stern, but as copies of oak-built ships the Scamander class did not have this feature. The naval historian Robert Gardiner describes the class as an "austerity" version of the Apollos.
The first seven ships of the Scamander class, six of which were ordered in May before the war had begun, were built with red pine. The final three, of which Hebrus was one, received yellow pine. All ships of the class were ordered to commercial shipyards rather than Royal Navy Dockyards, with the navy providing the pine for their construction from its own stocks. Hebrus was ordered on 16 November 1812, to be built by the shipwright John Barton at Limehouse. The frigate was laid down in January of the following year, and launched on 13 September with the following dimensions: along the upper deck, at the keel, with a beam of and a depth in the hold of . The ship had a draught of forward and aft, and measured 939 tons burthen. She was named after the River Hebrus.
Pine was a lighter material than oak which allowed the ships to often sail faster than those built of the heavier wood, but this in turn meant that the ships required more ballast than usual to ensure that they sat at their designated waterline. Based on an oak-built design but with more ballast than that design was expected to carry, Hebrus and her class were designed with a distinctly shallower depth in the hold. This ensured that the frigates were not adversely affected by the excess ballast, which could cause them to be "over-stiff".
Having already been coppered by Barton, the fitting out process for Hebrus was completed at Deptford Dockyard on 18 December. The frigate originally had a crew complement of 274, but this was increased to 284 for the entire class on 26 January 1813, while she was still under construction. Hebrus held twenty-six 18-pounder long guns on her upper deck. Complimenting this armament were twelve 32-pounder carronades on the quarterdeck, with two 9-pounder long guns and two additional 32-pounder carronades on the forecastle. Hebrus is often described as a 42-gun frigate rather than a 36-gun one.
Service Napoleonic Wars
While completing her fitting out process, Hebrus was commissioned by Captain Edmund Palmer in October 1813. The frigate was sent to serve in the English Channel. On 23 January 1814 the French 40-gun frigates Étoile and Sultane battled two British frigates off the Cape Verde Islands inconclusively. They then made their way towards St Malo. On 26 March the French ships were sailing in heavy fog off Roscoff when they almost ran into the 16-gun sloop HMS Sparrow, subsequently engaging and disabling her. Hebrus, patrolling near by, closed on the scene and began to fire at the enemy frigates. The noise of the combat attracted the 74-gun ship of the line HMS Hannibal, which sailed towards Hebrus as the fog began to clear. Soon afterwards the wind changed direction and Étoile and Sultane began to separate themselves from the British.
Sultane, which was already jury rigged from the action off the Cape Verde Islands, was quickly caught up with and captured by Hannibal at 3:15 p.m. Hebrus was sent by Captain Sir Michael Seymour of Hannibal to chase Étoile with Sparrow. Hebrus soon outpaced Sparrow and closed with the French vessel, catching up with her as the latter passed through Alderney Race just after midnight. By this time the wind had begun to falter and at 1:40 a.m. on 27 March Étoile fired at Hebrus as she passed close to the shore at Jobourg. Hebrus returned fire and sailed to get between the French vessel and the coastline.
By 2 a.m. the duelling frigates were almost becalmed and in shoal water. Étoile crossed in front of Hebrus at 2:20 a.m. to again get closer to the coast and fired into the latter's rigging, severely damaging it. Despite this, at 3 a.m. Palmer took advantage of a slight breeze and manoeuvred Hebrus so that the frigate could rake her opponent. Hebrus began firing at Étoile from a very close distance, with the two ships hardly moving. While the French vessel had aimed for rigging, Hebrus attacked Étoiles hull. The latter withstood the fire until around 4 a.m. when her mizzenmast was shot away, at which point she surrendered. This ended the Battle of Jobourg.
A French gun battery had been blindly firing towards the two frigates in the darkness as they fought, and the crew of Hebrus quickly took control of their prize to take her out of range. The two frigates found shelter in Vauville Bay, where they repaired what battle damage to their masts they could. Étoiles rigging and hull were both heavily damaged, and out of a crew of 320 she had forty killed and around seventy wounded. Hebruss casualties were less but still severe, with thirteen killed and twenty-five wounded.
War of 1812 In May Hebrus was assigned as an escort to the fleet transporting Major-General Robert Ross's reinforcements to serve in the War of 1812. They departed from Le Verdon-sur-Mer on 2 June and arrived at Bermuda in late July. Hebrus then reached the Coan River on 7 August, escorting a Royal Marine Battalion, and joined a force under Rear-Admiral George Cockburn; Cockburn was operating ashore at the time, and Palmer had to personally track the admiral down in his barge to report his presence. The force sailed to St. Mary's Creek on 11 August. By 16 August Hebrus was with Vice-Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane in Chesapeake Bay, where a large fleet had congregated for offensive operations. Hebrus was then part of the force under Cockburn that served in operations on the Patuxent River, where the American Chesapeake Bay Flotilla was based, later in the month.
They sailed up the river on 18 August, with an infantry force mirroring them on land. On 20 August the force reached Benedict, from where further travel was impossible for Hebrus and the other frigate on the operation, the 40-gun HMS Severn. Palmer left the ship and joined Cockburn, who was with the smaller ships at Nottingham, with the frigate's boats. American defence was initially non-existent, although an American cavalry patrol briefly fired on the advancing ships on 22 August. The naval force out-distanced the infantry and soon after reached Queen Anne where the Chesapeake Bay Flotilla was; as they approached the American ships, rigged for demolition, began exploding. Of the flotilla, only one gunboat and thirteen merchant schooners were left to be captured. Palmer was afterwards ordered ashore to support British Army operations, and was the only post-captain present at the victorious Battle of Bladensburg on 24 August, where he commanded a division of armed seamen. He was the only member of Hebruss crew there apart from his aide de camp, Midshipman Arthur Wakefield, as the majority of the naval contingent did not reach the battle in time. After Washington was burned on the following day a storm began and at 2:30 p.m. it hit Benedict, where Hebrus and Severn were driven onto the shore; it was recorded that the winds
Hebrus subsequently joined a squadron of frigates and bomb vessels commanded by Captain James Gordon, that was intended to attack Baltimore from the sea in the upcoming Battle of Baltimore. Having arrived two days earlier, on 12 September the squadron slowly crawled up the shallows of the Patapsco River. Hebrus frequently got stuck in the river mud, having to be pulled off by her anchors. At 6 a.m. on 13 September the ships reached Fort McHenry, halting around away. The presence of the fort's batteries, alongside several hulks and booms, stopped the force from being able to access Baltimore's harbour. The squadron began to bombard the fort, with most of the impact being done by the powerful bomb vessels rather than the frigates. The British were out of range of the American guns, and received no return fire. In the afternoon some of the bombs were sent in closer to the fort, but were forced back when they finally came in range of the Americans; Hebrus sent out her launch to reconnoitre the harbour to their front, where the 44-gun frigate USS Java was moored, but that was also forced to retire. With the British Army assault from land having failed, after twenty-five hours of bombardment Cochrane ordered Gordon's squadron to stop firing, and they returned down the river.