HMS Comet

The Royal Navy has used the name Comet no fewer than 18 times:

• HMS Comet (1695) was a 4-gun bomb vessel built in 1695 that the French captured in 1706.
• HMS Comet (1742) was a 14-gun bomb vessel in use from 1742 to 1749, when she was sold.[1] She became the armed merchant vessel named Adventure that appears in Lloyd's Register between 1776,[2] and 1784.[3]
• HMS Comet (1756) was an 8-gun galley used in 1756.
• HMS Comet (1758) was a 10-gun brig-sloop in India in 1758.
• HMS Comet was the name given to the 10-gun sloop HMS Diligence after her recommissioning as a fireship in 1779.
• HM galley Comet (1777) was a schooner that South Carolina Navy purchased in 1775, converted into a brigantine, and named Comet. The RN captured her in 1777 and converted her into a galley that was destroyed in 1779 during the Siege of Savannah.
• HMS Comet was the Guineaman (slave ship) Betsey that the Royal Navy purchased at Antigua in 1777 and armed with 10-14 guns. The navy sold her in Britain in 1778.
• HM Schooner Comet, of 10 guns, formerly "McDonogh's Packet", operated in 1777 and captured three American vessels in May. She may have been a ship's tender to HMS Aeolus.
• HMS Comet was commissioned in 1780 and paid off in 1782.[4] On 23 December 1781 the "bomb-galley" Comet participated in an invasion of Georgia.[5]
• HMS Comet (1783) was a fireship built in 1783 and used in 1800 at Dunkirk Roads.
• HMS Comet (1807) was an 18-gun sloop launched in 1807 and sold in 1815.
• HMS Comet (1822) was launched in 1822, making her the first steam-powered vessel of the Royal Navy, although not added to the Navy List until 1831.
• HMS Comet (1828) was an 18-gun Comet-class sloop launched in 1828, renamed Comus in 1832, and broken up 1862.
• HMS Comet was the former HMS Thunderer, renamed in 1869.
• HMS Comet (1870) was an Ant-class flat-iron gunboat launched in 1870 and sold for breaking in 1908.
• HMS Comet (1910) was an Acorn-class destroyer launched in 1910 and sunk by an Austrian submarine in 1918.
• HMS Comet (H00) was a 1930s C-class destroyer launched in 1931, renamed Restigouche in 1938, and broken up in 1946.
• HMS Comet (R26) was a 1940s C-class destroyer in service from 1944 to 1962.

Citations and references

Citations

1. "No. 8847". The London Gazette. 6 May 1749. p. 2.
2. Lloyd's Register (1776), Seq. №A87.
3. Lloyd's Register (1784), Seq. №A82.
4. Winfield (2007), p.335.
5. Gentleman's and London Magazine: Or Monthly Chronologer, 1741-1794, p.207.

References

• Colledge, J. J.; Warlow, Ben (2006) [1969]. Ships of the Royal Navy: The Complete Record of all Fighting Ships of the Royal Navy (Rev. ed.). London: Chatham Publishing. ISBN 978-1-86176-281-8.
• Winfield, Rif (2007). British Warships in the Age of Sail 1714–1792: Design, Construction, Careers and Fates. Seaforth. ISBN 978-1844157006.