HMS Tamar

Five ships and a naval station of the Royal Navy have been called HMS Tamar, after the River Tamar in South West England:

• HMS Tamar was a 16-gun sloop launched at Saltash in 1758 and stationed in Newfoundland from 1763. She was renamed HMS Pluto and became a fire-ship in 1777; the French captured her in 1780.
• HMS Tamar was a store lighter launched in 1795 and purchased that year for Navy service. She was broken up in 1798.
• HMS Tamar was a 38-gun fifth rate launched in 1796 and broken up in 1810.
• HMS Tamar was a 26-gun sixth rate launched in 1814, converted into a coal hulk in 1831 and sold in 1837.
• HMS Tamar was an iron screw troop ship launched in 1863. She became a base ship in Hong Kong in 1897 and was scuttled in 1941.

• HMS Tamar was the name for the Royal Navy's shore base in Hong Kong from 1897 to 1997, named after the initial vessel to serve as the base ship.

• The River-class frigate, previously named HMS Aire. Aire was briefly renamed Tamar on her transfer to the base on 14 March 1946 as the base's nominal depot ship. The name reverted to Aire on 20 November 1946 when she was condemned. She was wrecked in the early hours of 20 December 1946 when a typoon drove her aground on Bombay Reef.^[1]

See also

The SS Tamar was a 3,207 ton British steamer run by the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, that the Kronprinz Wilhelm sank off Brazil during World War I on 24 March 1915, while Tamar was on a passage from Santos to Le Havre.^[2] She was one of four ships that bore this name between 1854 and 1922.^[3]

References

1. "Shipwrecked in the South China Sea". Royal Navy Research Archive. Retrieved 11 June 2012.
2. "Royal Mail Steam Packet Company 1914–1926". www.merchantnavyofficers.com. Retrieved 28 April 2010.
3. "Royal Mail Steam Packet Company / Royal Mail Lines Limited". The Ships List. Retrieved 28 April 2010.