HMS Dreadnought was a Royal Navy 98-gun second rate. This ship of the line was launched at Portsmouth at midday on Saturday, 13 June 1801, after she had spent 13 years on the stocks.

Her first master was Mr. Banks followed by Joseph Foss Dessiou (1769–1853), who was paid off on 15 July 1802.

In 1803, Captain Edward Brace briefly took command as flag captain to William Cornwallis, until he was relieved that same year by Captain John Child Purvis.

Early in October 1805, Captain John Conn assumed command of Dreadnought, after having brought Royal Sovereign out from England for Vice-Admiral Collingwood. Collingwood and Rotheram then moved to the newly recoppered first rate on 10 October 1805, leaving Conn in command of the now sluggish Dreadnought, with her barnacled hull badly in need of careening, but nevertheless with a well exercised ship's company, who for months having been under Collingwood's watchful eye, now contained the most efficient gun crews in the fleet. Dreadnought shared the prize money with ten other British warships.

Dreadnought continued to patrol the Channel and the Baltic for another seven years.

In 1807, under Captain William Lechmere, she was part of the Channel Fleet. From 1808 to 1809, she was under Captain G. B. Salt, serving as the flagship of Rear-Admiral Thomas Sotheby, off Ushant.

On 7 September 1810 Snapper spotted a ship among the rocks on the west side of Ushant. She notified Dreadnought, which attempted a cutting out expedition. The British succeeded in taking the Spanish merchant brig Maria-Antonia, which had been taken by a French privateer. However, the success was bought at a cost of six dead, 31 wounded and six missing, as well as two ship's boats, as a result of an ambush by a large party of French troops with two field guns on a cliff overlooking the anchorage.

In spring 1811, Dreadnought, under Captain Samuel Hood Linzee, was in Lisbon. She then was in the Baltic at the end of the year.

Land-based infirmary

When the Admiralty had Dreadnought broken up, it transferred the infirmary to the , which was renamed Dreadnought. In 1870 the infirmary transferred onto land as the Seamen's Dreadnought Hospital at the Royal Greenwich Hospital. Since 1986, this has become the 'Dreadnought Unit' at St Thomas's Hospital. In addition, the Seamen's Dreadnought Hospital provided in 1919 the foundation for the UK's dedicated Hospital for Tropical Diseases. The Dreadnought (Hospital) Building at Greenwich is now part of the University of Greenwich and was redeveloped and reopened in 2018. The building hosts the Faculty of Education, Health and Human Sciences (FEHHS) and the Greenwich Students' Union along with student support services.

Citations

References

  • Phillips, Michael, Ships of the Old Navy – Dreadnought (1801).