HMS GANNET A Notable Little Vessel In 1911, a writer to the 'Mariner's Mirror' noted that HMS President, lately the R.N.R. training ship in the South West India docks in London, and formerly known as HMS Gannet, had been lent out as a private training school, and wistfully commented on the passing of a 'notable little vessel'. It would have pleased that correspondent to know that the same 'notable little vessel' is still afloat three-quarters of a century later. Berthed at Chatham Dockyard, she is being prepared to start a fresh chapter in her long and interesting history. When volunteers have finished the work of restoration, she will become part of the historic ship collection at Chatham.
HMS GANNET entering Malta 1894 HMS Gannet is a surviving example of the Victorian Royal Navy in transition from sail to steam. At the beginning of Victoria's reign in 1837 the fleet was not so very different to that of Nelson's time. But soon after the queen died in 1901, all was steel and steam. "Little did I think," wrote one Victorian admiral in his memoirs, "that I was to see every familiar thing disappear, and to watch the growth of a new Navy."
HMS Gannet was an attractive vessel, a sloop of the 'Osprey' class with a clipper bow, built of teak on an iron frame and weighing 1130 tons. She was rigged as a barque, but carried a two cylinder Humphrey and Tennant horizontal compound engine developing 1107 h.p. The propeller could be drawn up above the water into the stern in order to reduce 'drag' when the sails were being used, and the telescopic funnel could be lowered out of the way of the set of the sails. The order given at sea for the change of propulsion was "up funnel and down screw", and sailors came to use this phrase to refer to HMS Gannet and her sister ships. By the time she was built, the trend was towards the increasing development of steam-alone ships, but sloops and other smaller vessels retained their sails because they were often on patrol over vast sweeps of the ocean for months at a stretch, sometimes a long way from any coal supplies moreover, not everyone was convinced of the reliability of steam engines.
Sloops were used by the Royal Navy at this period in history to patrol Britain's ever-increasing trade routes and to show the flag in far-flung posts of our Empire. Equipped for such tasks with four carriage-mounted 641b. guns and two 7" muzzle loaded rifle guns, HMS Gannet, which had been launched at Sheerness early in 1878, set sail from Plymouth in May with a crew of thirteen officers, twenty-seven Petty Officers, sixty-four Seamen, eleven Boys and twenty-four Marines for South America. The Captain was Commander Edward Burke, R.N.
At this time, Britain had quite extensive trade with the various countries of South America and a long voyage was in prospect. Sailors' lives at sea in the 187~)s were probably not so very different to their counterparts of the earlier years of the century. There had been official uniforms since 1857, but the men still had to make their own - blue serge for winter, white canvas duck for the summer, and the cost was deducted from their pay. 'Make and Mend' sessions still took place on Thursday afternoons, and special times were set aside for washing clothes. Men still slept on hammocks in crowded mess decks, and still worked barefoot much of the time, particularly in the tropics. Discipline was stern, although flogging had been officially suspended in 1879. But food was certainly better, and more organised physical training kept the men fit. Gilbert and Sullivan's affectionate satire, 'HMS Pinafore' which was being performed at the Opera Comique to packed houses at this time contained a song which well summed-up the attitude of the British Tar - "His eyes should flash with inborn fire, his brow with scorn be wrung; he never should bow down to a domineering frown, or the tang ofa tyrant tongue."
The first South American port-of-call for HMS Gannet was the capital of Brazil, known in the 1870's as 'Rio Janeiro' without the 'de'. Here the crew was granted leave to sample the exotic and unusual night life - a far cry from their last evening ashore in Plymouth! When HMS Gannet sailed again, she had to battle through a force 10 gale under close-reefed topsails towards Possession Bay in South Georgia where she picked up coal. She carried on through difficult waters on the Magellan Straits, and then turned up the Pacific Coast for South America, passing Punta Arenas where one of her sister ships, HMS Doterel, was later to meet her end. The men sighted some German ironclads -shades of things to come - and landed parties now and then to gather wood for fuel to supplement coal supplies which were dwindling fast.
HMS GANNET getting underway – Suez 1894 By the end of August, HMS Gannet had reached Valparaiso in Chile; after a call there she sailed up to the Panama Canal which she reached in June of the following year. Next it was on to the islands of Toboga, Saboga and Pedro Gonzales, followed by a visit to Honolulu and then a heavy battle through gales to San Francisco and Acapulco. The enormous itinerary continued with calls on Hawaii, Hilo, Fannings Island, Christmas Island, Jarvis Island, Maiden Island and Tahiti before she returned to the more coastal waters of South America. At last in 1883, her first long commission was over and she returned to England.
HMS Gannet's remaining service life involved patrol, support and surveying work in the eastern Mediterranean, Suez Canal and Red Sea. These were difficult and troubled times thereabouts. The Suez Canal was relatively new, and Britain was anxious to preserve its strong influence in the area in order to safeguard the passage to India in particular, but various rebellions against existing regimes and a general anti-European feeling had resulted in the necessity for military intervention. In 1888, British, Indian and Egyptian soldiers were engaged against rebel leader Osman Digna and his Dervish followers, based on the island of Suakin. The Navy was called up in support of the troops and HMS Gannet was one of the vessels ordered in to provide assistance. It was here that she was forced to fire her guns in war for the only time in her life. Her log for September 15th 1888 reads: "06.20 Fired 3 shells, 5" B. L., at Osman Digna's men behind the lines." She remained in the area, firing occasionally until returning to Malta to be paid off in November 1888.
For six more years, HMS Gannet carried out surveying duties in the area before returning to England to be finally paid off at Sheerness in 1895. Her last log book entry reads: "HMS Gannet placed out of commission and passed to 'C' Division Dockyard Reserve" and "Sunset, hauled down pennant. " New experiments in design, rapidly developing technology and the developing Naval race between Britain and the other great powers were quickly changing the face of the Senior Service. More efficient and powerful engines were driving quicker vessels, and already the first cruisers without sails, the 'Mersey' class, were in operation. Much more money was available. In twenty years' time the Navy was to be bristling with great grey ships of a style and power unimaginable to the designers of the 1870's.
Main deck looking aft – Suez 1894. To the right of the picture is a 7” Muzzle loading gun The next few years saw HMS Gannet serving as a sail training ship, stripped of its engine. In 1904, Fisher's massive naval reforms included a ruthless scrapping of older vessels, but HMS Gannet survived and was given the honourable position of R.N.V.R. Headquarters Training Ship. Re-named, as tradition demanded, 'HMS President', she was based in the West India Docks in London. She replaced a venerable vessel which had been heavily criticised for its obsolete equipment, out-of-date guns, and for the suspicion that its Petty Officers could be bribed by trainees to give favourable reports!
In 1911, the ex-HMS Gannet found herself another home and another name. On the River Hamble, Charles Hoare had earlier founded a training school for boys for entrance to the Royal and Merchant Navies, and now he needed a replacement for his barque 'Mercury'. Our ship was found to be ideal for the purpose and the Director of Mercury, C.B. Fry, was promised a replacement ship by the Admiralty in 1911 and that HMS President II(as Gannet had become) was assigned. However, no action was taken to move the vessel to the River Hamble until Winston Churchill intervened on behalf of Fry in early 1914. After conversion at Sheerness she was transferred to the Hamble, she was towed to Portsmouth by the battleship HMS Queen and from Portsmouth she was taken by tug to the River Hamble arriving in June 1914. There she stayed, minus mast and with her decks built over and her new name, 'T.S. Mercury', well-loved and well-used for over fifty years until the school closed down in 1968. The ex-HMS Gannet, which had been such a familiar landmark to Hamble river users for so long was now 90 years old, and was passed to the Maritime Trust for preservation. The ship remained in the Hamble until 10th February 1970 when she was towed away, initially to Southampton and then to Fareham Creek, where she was to remain under the care of the Maritime Trust until she was sold to the Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust in July 1987. Hopefully, soon the 'notable little vessel' will be restored to her original elegance to evoke for twentieth-century visitors those long-ago days "when Britain really ruled the waves". Here restoration is expected to be complete by Summer 2003 and more information can be found at Historic Dockyard Chatham website
