A wartime lack of building materials meant that Minerva and her class were built to the outdated 50-year-old design of the Richmond class, and were thus smaller than many contemporary frigates.[2]
Service history
Thames was expected to be commissioned by Captain John Loring but a delay in such meant that Thames's first captain was actually Captain Bridges Taylor, who commissioned Thames in November 1805.[3][2] On 9 July 1806, Thames, Phoebe and Blanchewere directed towards Shetland to intercept French frigates that were menacing the fishing vessels.[4]Thames initially served on the Downs Station before briefly serving on the Jamaica Station and in the Mediterranean from 3 March 1807.[2] In April 1808 Thames returned to Portsmouth where Captain George Waldegrave assumed command and then sailed again for the Mediterranean.[3] On 27 July 1810 Thames was serving alongside the sloopsPilot and HMS Weazel; together they drove an enemy convoy ashore at Amantea and took six gunboats, two large galleys, and twenty-eight transports with their subsequent landing parties.[2][3] The destruction of the convoy halted Joachim Murat's planned invasion of Sicily.[3] From June 1810 Thames served with the sloop Cephalus; on 16 June a convoy the ships had been following was found beached at Cetraro and a landing party of 180 men burned the entire convoy.[3] After this command of Thames transferred to Captain Charles Napier.[2]
On 20 July 1811 Thames and Cephalus attacked and captured the fort at Porto del Infrischi and in turn captured eleven gunboats, an armed felucca, and fourteen merchant vessels.[3] In September Thames came under the orders of Captain Henry Duncan in HMS Imperieuse and together they captured ten Neapolitan gunboats at Palinuro on 2 November.[2] In the spring of 1812 Napier became the senior naval officer on the coast of Calabria and as such Thames and Pilot captured Sapri on 14 May after a two-hour bombardment, capturing twenty-nine merchant vessels.[3] In February 1813 it was found that the island of Ponza was a hub for enemy privateers and so on 16 February Thames and the frigate HMS Furieuse embarked two battalions of soldiers and landed them under fire at Ponza on 26 February.[3][2] With support from the frigates the soldiers took the heights of the island, inducing its governor to surrender.[3]
Winfield, Rif (2008). British Warships in the Age of Sail 1793–1817: Design, Construction, Careers and Fates. Barnsley: Seaforth Publishing. ISBN978-1-84415-717-4.
