Name HMS Leveret Fate Wrecked 10 Nov 1807 Launched 14 January 1806 | Ordered 16 July 1803 Tonnage 384 ⁄94 (bm) | |
Length 100 ft 0 in (30.48 m) (gundeck)77 ft 2 ⁄4 in (23.539 m) (keel) | ||
HMS Leveret was a Cruizer-class brig-sloop built by John King at Dover and launched in 1806. She was commissioned under Commander George Salt. She sailed for the Mediterranean in April 1807 and was off Cadiz in July. Later she sailed to the Baltic. On 21 October she recaptured the brig Beaver, of Yarmouth.
Later that month Commander Richard James Laurence O’Connor took command. She was under his command when she wrecked on the Galloper Rock near Great Yarmouth during a gale on 10 November. She had been ordered to see Waldemaar, a captured Danish ship-of-the-line, safely into port. No lives were lost as a fishing smack, the Samuel, came up and Leveret's crew used her boats to transfer to the smack.
A contemporary newspaper report has the gale forcing Leveret onto the "Long Sand", where she lost her rudder. With seven feet of water in her hold she was drifting towards the Galloper. As the water level rose, the crew were ordered to abandon ship and took to the boats. A vessel out of Ipswich then took them to Harwich.
The court martial held on board Magnanime in Sheerness Harbour on 18 November 1807 ruled that O'Connor, his officers and his crew had made every exertion to save their ship once she had struck. Rear Admiral Wells, Commander-in-Chief Sheerness, then charged that O'Connor had not helped a frigate "on her beam ends" on the Long Sand on 10 November. The court ruled that O'Connor was blameless and that the charge was not proven. O'Connor’s next command was the 18-gun brig Ned Elven.