HMS Royalist (1883)

Royalist was ordered from Devonport Dockyard and laid down on 27 April 1881.[1] She was launched on 7 March 1883[2] and reclassified as a corvette in 1884 before being commissioned for the first time on 14 April 1886.[1]

She was built of an iron frame with wooden planking (hence "composite") and her class was unique in being the only wooden or composite ships of the Royal Navy to be fitted with an armoured deck. She was fitted with a horizontal compound-expansion steam engine by Maudslay, Sons and Field. This engine produced 1,470 indicated horsepower (1,096 kW) and drove a single screw. Masts and spars were provided for a barque rig.[1]

Although four of her sister ships were armed with two 6-inch and ten 5-inch breech-loading guns, Royalist, in common with Heroine and Hyacinth, received a homogenous outfit of eight BL 6-inch/100-pounder (81cwt) Mk II guns, complemented with a light gun and 4 machine guns.[3]

Initially on service with the Cape of Good Hope Station, she commenced service on the Australia Station in May 1888.[2] Ships on the Australia Station were active in the Pacific in the management of the British Western Pacific Territories.

Under the command of Captain Edward Henry Meggs Davis, Royalist conducted a survey in 1891-92, visiting: Vanuatu and New Caledonia (10 December 1889 to 18 June 1891); Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands (18 June 1891 to 9 April 1892); and Gilbert Islands, Marshall Islands and Ellice Islands[4] (14 April 1892 to 30 August 1892).[5]

In September 1891, the Royalist punish a village of the Kalikoqu tribe of in the Roviana Lagoon, southern side of New Georgia Island in the Solomon Islands, following a murder of a trader; the sailors shot some of the men who were believed to be the leaders, set fire to the village and destroyed canoes.[6] On 27 May 1892, Captain Davis proclaimed the Gilbert Islands to be a British Protectorate.[4]

During the Samoan civil unrest in 1899, she took part in operations with HMS Porpoise and HMS Tauranga.[2] She left the Australia Station in June 1899.[2] In February 1900 she was hulked and used for harbour service, she was renamed Colleen on 1 December 1913. The Antarctic explorer Tom Crean, who had been part of both Captain Scott's and Ernest Shackleton's expeditions, served in Colleen as a boatswain during the later years of World War I.

Colleen was transferred to the Irish Free State on 19 February 1923[2] and broken up in 1950.

• Bastock, John (1988), Ships on the Australia Station, Child & Associates Publishing Pty Ltd; Frenchs Forest, Australia. ISBN 0-86777-348-0
• Winfield, R.; Lyon, D. (2004). The Sail and Steam Navy List: All the Ships of the Royal Navy 1815–1889. London: Chatham Publishing. ISBN 978-1-86176-032-6.