In service 1794 - 1833 Cancelled 1 | Built 1793 - 1817 Completed 30 | |
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Name Cormorant-class ship-sloop | ||
The Cormorant class were built as a class of 16-gun ship sloops for the Royal Navy, although an extra 2 guns were added soon after completion.
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Design
The two Surveyors of the Navy - Sir William Rule and Sir John Henslow - jointly designed the class. A notation on the back of the plans held at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, states that the designers based their plan on the lines of the captured French sloop Amazon, captured in 1745.
The Admiralty ordered six vessels to this design in February 1793; it ordered a seventh vessel in the following year. Twenty-four more were ordered to the same design in 1805 - 1806, although in this new batch 32-pounder carronades were fitted instead of the 6-pounder guns originally mounted in the earlier batch; of this second batch one ship (Serpent) was cancelled and another (Ranger) completed to a slightly lengthened variant of the design.