HM Gun Brig Adder – 1797

The Acute Class was a group of 15 brig-rigged, 14-gun gunboats designed by Sir John Henslow, Co-Surveyor of the Navy, of which 11 were built in Kent shipyards. They were a slight enlargement of Henslow’s previous Gunboat design, the Conquest Class.

The Acute Class gunboats were vessels of 160 tons. They were 75ft 2in long on the main deck, 61ft 8in long at the keel and 22ft 2in wide across the beams. Their holds were 8ft deep, they drew 3ft 9in of water at the bow and 6ft at the rudder. This does not include the depth of the Schank Sliding Keels. They were manned by a crew of 50 men and boys. Not being ocean-going vessels, they were commanded by a Lieutenant-in-Command rather someone appointed to be their Master and Commander and he was the only commissioned officer aboard. The vessels were armed with 12 x 18pdr carronades on the broadside, with 2 x 24pdr long guns in the bow.

Adder was ordered on 7/02/1797, and keel laid that same month, and launched on 22/04/1797. In 1798, according to both Daivid Lyon’s Sailing Navy List and Rif Winfield’s similar work, British Warships in the Age of Sail, Adder was lengthened in 1798 to 97 feet along the deck, so Adder may not have been coppered when first commissioned. She was broken up in 1805.