This page sets out in greater detail the ships in which Samuel served while in the Royal Navy from 1857 to 1865. These ships were:
(a) HMS Crocodile
Samuel served in this ship from 18 August 1857 to 1 January 1858 (c. 4 months). Crocodile had been a ship of the line and was built at the Chatham Dockyard near London in October 1825. She was 114 feet long by 32 feet wide and had been armed with 20 32-pdr. carronades, 6 18-pdr. cannon and 2 6-pdr. cannon.
In 1850 she was put into harbour service serving as a floating defence for London . At the time Samuel enlisted in the Navy in 1857 she was used as a receiving ship (i.e. as a recruiting station) for new sailors and was moored near the Tower of London. She was sold in 1861.
(b) HMS Vigilant
Vigilant had been built at Mare, Blackwall in March 1856 and was a wooden screw (i.e.propeller driven) gun vessel. She was 181 feet long by 28 1/2 feet wide. Samuel served in the ship from 1 January 1858 to 22 December 1859 (almost 2 years).
She was sold in February 1869 in Bombay.
(c) HMS Excellent
Excellent was built as the Queen Charlotte at Deptford Dockyard on May 1810. She was a 1st rate ship of the line and was 190 feet long by 53 1/2 feet wide.
In December 1859 she was renamed Excellent and was then permanently moored in Portsmouth as the gunnery training ship used by the Royal Navy. Samuel served on the ship from 22 December 1859 to 14 December 1860 (c. 12 months).
Until the establishment of Excellent the Royal Navy did not have any formal system of teaching gunners on its ships the science of gunnery. Much was left to individual captains to train their own gun crews.
The men who came to Excellent were to be taught:
"....the names of the different parts of a gun and carriage, the dispart in terms of lineal magnitude and in degrees how taken, what constitutes point blank and what line of metal range, windage - the errors and the loss of force attending it, the importance of preserving shot from rust, the theory of the most material effects of different charges of powder applied to practice with a single shot, also with a plurality of balls, showing how these affect accuracy, penetration and splinters, to judge the condition of gunpowder by inspection, to ascertain its quality by the ordinary tests and trials, as well as by actual proof."
The men practised as teams, firing guns and loading shot on a range laid out from Excellent. Firing of the guns took place over mudflats uncovered at low tide. A local family would collect the shot from the mudflats and sell it back to the Navy.
Within the Navy training at Excellent was popular and Excellent was also used as a boys' training ship and a mizzen mast was kept rigged for sail training. Excellent held approximately 600 men under training together with some 200 Royal Artillery instructors. The trainees lived on the lower deck messing between the 32 pounder cannon just as in a sea going ship.Those who qualified at Excellent as seamen gunners were paid an additional 3 pence a day.
(d) HMS Harrier
(HMS Harrier)
Harrier was built at Pembroke Dock, South Wales, and commissioned into the Royal Navy on 13 May 1845. She was wooden screw sloop and 160 feet long by 32 feet wide and a draught of 11 feet.. She carried 17 32-pounder cannon. Samuel served in the ship from 14 December 1860 to March 1865 (c. 4 years 3 months) while Harrier was serving in the Australia Station. .
Harrier was one of a class of 6 wooden screw sloops, the others being Alert, Cruiser, Falcon, Hornet and Fawn. Alert and Falcon also served on the Australia Station at various times.At this time the phrase "screw sloop" was used to distinguish this type of ship from a "sail sloop." Harrier was one of those ships in the transitional age when the Royal Navy was changing from sail to steam power. She had both a steam engine (hence the single screw or propeller) and sails. At this time steam engines were not completely reliable and when the engine broke down the sails could be used. The sails would also be used on long sea voyages.
Harrier's steam engine produced 360 horse power to give her a speed of 9 knots. She carried a crew of approximately 160 and had a coal capacity of 100 tons.
A 19th century sloop such as Harrier was a reduced version of the corvette and the sloop would be rigged as a ship (3 masts) or a brig( 2 masts). As can be seen from the drawing of the Harrier elsewhere on this page she was 3 masted and so she was a ship. Typically a sloop would displace 940 - 1570 tons.
The 32- pounder cannon she carried was the standard Royal Navy cannon of this time and the cannon could fire solid shot (a cannon ball), hollow shells filled with gunpowder or shrapnel or case shot (a cylindrical canister filled with small pellets) or grape shot ( 2 small cannon balls linked by a chain). The classification of the gun as a 32 pounder cannon was taken from the weight of the solid shot fired from the gun.
(32 pndr. cannon as used
on HMS Harrier)
Before coming to the Australia Station (see below), and before Samuel joined the ship, Harrier served in the Gulf of Bothnia (between present day Finland, Germany and Russia) during the Crimean War blockading Russian ports. While on the Australia Station and before going to New Zealand Harrier went to Fiji in 1862 to assist resolve a local dispute.Commander Francis William Sullivan was the ship's captain when Samuel joined the ship in December 1860 and on 9 November 1863 Commander Edward Hay was appointed captain of the Harrier. It was this Commander Hay who led the Naval Brigade in the assault on Gate Pa and who was carried out of the pa by Samuel.
During the New Zealand Wars Harrier took part in numerous incidents, including:
In February 1863 Harrier was also involved in the rescue of survivors from HMS Orpheus which had gone aground on a sand spit at the entrance to Manukau Harbour, New Zealand. At that time Orpheus was the flagship of the Australia station. In going to the rescue of Orpheus Harrier herself grounded and had to be refloated later.
Samuel joined Harrier as an Ordinary Seaman, and was then promoted to Able Bodied Seaman, Leading Seaman and then 2nd Captain of the Foretop. It was in this last position that he was awarded the Victoria Cross. The "tops" were the platforms placed over the head of the lower section of a mast to extend the topmast shrouds - the ropes that support the masts. The tops were named according to the mast - foretop on the foremast (or first from the bow of the ship), maintop on the mainmast.
In close actions the tops were used as "fighting tops" from which marine marksmen would fire down on enemy decks. In ordinary times they were where smart seamen were stationed to supervise the men taking in and setting the sails.As a 2nd Captain of the Foretop Samuel would have earned 93 pounds, 9 shillings and 2 pence per year as the the junior of the 2 men in charge of the Foretop men.
After Samuel left the Harrier in September 1864 as Bosun's Mate Harrier returned to England and she was paid off, sold and broken up at Portsmouth in December 1866.
(e) Duke of Wellington
The Duke of Wellington was a 1st rate ship of the line that had been built in Pembroke Dock in 1852. She was 240 feet long and 73 feet wide. In May 1863 (when Samuel stayed on her) she was used only for harbour duties in Portsmouth and in that role she served as a ship where men went when they were being paid off from the Royal Navy. She had a normal compliment of 1,000 men but with drafts of men passing through on occasions she had 4,000 men on board. The ship was sold in 1904 to be broken up.
In the first half of the 19th century Australasia had been part of the Royal Navy's East Indies station. In the early 1850's there were worsening relations between Russia and England and an increased Russian naval presence in the Pacific. As a consequence, and as a result of settler representations, it was decided to establish Australia as a separate naval command based in Sydney. On 25 March 1859 Captain William Loring was authorised to:
"....hoist a (commodore's) Blue Pennant and to assume command as Senior Officer of Her Majesty's Ships on the Australian Station independently of the Commander in Chief in India."
So the Australia Squadron began. This squadron was to provide Australia and New Zealand's sea defence for the next 50 years until they could provide navies of their own. The Station encompassed Australia, New Zealand, Papua-New Guinea, most of Indonesia and the Fiji Islands. Australia and New Zealand were excluded from the station in 1911. Harrier was stationed on the Australia Station between December 1860 and 1864.
During the period of the New Zealand Wars (1860 - 1864) most of the Royal Navy ships in the Australia Squadron were stationed in the waters of the North Island of New Zealand. These ships were Curacoa (the Australia station flagship from 1863 carrying Commodore Wiseman), Eclipse, Esk, Falcon, Harrier and Miranda.During
The Naval brigades was a group of sailors (called "bluejackets") from one or more ships who would be sent ashore as the need arose to quell an insurrection or restore order in some part of the British empire. Naval Brigades operated around the world from the Crimea, India, Burma, Japan, Africa and New Zealand.
In England the Harrier's Naval Brigade is commemorated by a white Carrara marble monument erected in Kingston churchyard in Portsmouth. The monument is an anchor and chain cable, with Harrier's name engraved on the anchor, mounted on a slab of Belgian marble. The names of Commander Hay and 16 other seamen (Samuel?) are engraved on the side.
