WS - USS Hornet (1805)

The design of the USS Hornet was a compromise between US Navy frigates and coastal gunboats, as the US Navy also required smaller, easy to handle ships with a small draft but enough firepower to fend off even larger ships. After commissioning, she performed duties protecting the Atlantic coast of the USA until 29 March 1806, when she was sent to a squadron protecting American merchant ships from pirates in the Mediterranean Sea. She returned to the USA from this mission on 29.11.1807 and was decommissioned. From the beginning of her service, her crew repeatedly complained of troublesome sail handling, which was the reason why her sister ship USS Wasp was completed as a three-masted, full-rigged brigantine rather than a two-masted brigantine. She returned to service on 26 December 1808. For the next less than 2 years, the vessel participated in the enforcement of the Embargo Act of 1807, transporting General James Wilkinson to New Orleans and carrying courier courier shipments to Britain, France and the Netherlands. In November 1810, the rebuilding of the ship began at the Washington Navy Yard vpp to correct sail handling problems. The USS Hornet was converted to a three-masted ship and also received more robust armament. The conversion was completed in September 1811 and the Hornet returned to service. She also served as a courier ship until the outbreak of conflict with Britain in June 1812, and it was the Hornet that carried a diplomatic dispatch from Great Britain to the US, where Britain confirmed that the Royal Navy would continue to forcibly recruit US sailors for service aboard its ships.


After the outbreak of war, the USS Hornet, in a squadron under Commodore John Rodgers, participated in a raid into South America, during which she captured the British corsair Dolphin on 09.07.1812 (the Dolphin was recovered by the British, who captured her during her voyage to the USA). In October 1812, together with the USS Constitution under Commodore William Bainbridge, she sailed south again to restrict British naval shipping. She repeatedly blockaded British vessels in Brazilian ports (e.g. HMS Bonne Citoyenne in December 1812 in Salvador, Brazil, which was only relieved by the arrival of the British privateer HMS Montague with 74 guns on board, or the port of Bahía). In the following period, the ship operated off the coast of Guyana, where she sank the British sloop HMS Peacock off Demerara Harbour on 24 February 1813, and then returned to the USA, where she anchored off the island of Martha's Vineyard (Massachusetts) on 19 March 1813. She was assigned to a squadron under Commodore Stephen Decatur (along with the frigates USS United States and USS Macedonian - originally the British ship HMS Macedonian). The squadron sailed from New York on 24.05.1813, but on 01.06.1813 she encountered a strong group of British ships under Thomas Hardy (the privateers HMS Ramillies and HMS Valiant and the frigates HMS Acasta and HMS Orpheus) and was forced to retreat to New London harbour, where she was blockaded by British forces until the end of the war. A single Hornet managed to escape the British ships and resume service. On 14.12.1814, USS Hornet again embarked on an expedition to the South Atlantic. On 23.03.1815, during a brief battle off the island of Tristan da Cunha, she captured the British ship HMS Penguin, but the next attack was almost fatal to her. On 27.04.1815, USS Hornet attacked the British privateer HMS Cornwallis, which she misidentified as a merchant ship. The subsequent escape was only possible because the crew lightened the ship as much as possible to increase speed, so that not only the guns, but also boats and other ship's equipment went overboard.


After the end of the war, the USS Hornet operated in the West Indies, sailing to Copenhagen in 1818 and the Mediterranean in 1819. Returning to the US, he operated from Key West, Florida, operating against pirates and smugglers. On 29 December 1821, he captured the pirate schooner Moscow off the coast of Santo Domingo. He subsequently engaged in activities to suppress the illegal slave trade and operated throughout the Caribbean Sea. On March 4, 1829, the USS Hornet sailed from Pensacola to the coast of Mexico, but never returned. On 27.10.1829, the command of the squadron to which Hornet was assigned received information that USS Hornet had been destroyed on 10.09.1829 by a gale off Tampico and there were no survivors of the wreck.

Source: www.history.navy.mil
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Hornet_(1805)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Peacock_(1806)
en.wikipedia.org
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Decatur