HMS Surprise was the name the Royal Navy gave to the French Navy’s corvette Unité after its capture in 1796. Unité was launched on 16 January 1794. Surprise gained fame in 1799 for the recapture of HMS Hermione. In 1802 Surprise was sold out of the service.
Pierre-Alexandre Forfait designed Unité, the name ship for a class of corvette. Although the French initially rated Unité as a corvette, the ships of her class bridged a gap between smaller warships and frigates, and at various times were rated as frigates.
- Class & type - Unité-class corvette
- Displacement - 657 tons
- Length (Gundeck) 126 ft 0 in (38.4 m)
- Beam 31 ft 8 in (9.7 m)
- Complement - 172 (peace) & 220 (war)
- Armament
- As Unité:
- 24 × 8-pounder long guns
- 8 × 4-pounder long guns
As HMS Surprise:
- Gun deck: 24 × 32-Pounder carronades
- QD: 8 × 4-pounder guns + 4 × 12-pounder carronades
- Fc: 2 × 4-pounder chase guns + 2 × 12-pounder carronades
Fiction – (Main gun deck) - 24 x 9-pounder long guns
Fiction (Upper deck)– 14 x 18-pounder carronades + 2x6-pounder chase guns (40 guns in total)
HMS Surprise was the ship chosen by author Patrick O’Brian to restore Captain “Lucky” Jack Aubrey of the Aubrey–Maturin series to his place as a captain, and eventually see him raise his flag as an admiral of the Royal Navy. Surprise is an important element of the series, both because of her importance to the running plotline, and because of the emotional attachment she has earned among the characters in the book and real-life fans of the series.
In the late 1990s, publisher W. W. Norton & Company rented the replica of HMS Rose in New York for a pier-side party to celebrate the publication of Patrick O’Brian’s latest novel. O’Brian himself was present, and he casually mentioned to the frigate’s captain, Richard Bailey, that if the Rose were painted in an 1805 colour scheme, she would be a “dead ringer” for the frigate Surprise that appeared in his books. Bailey quickly ordered his crew to get out the paint and make the changes. O’Brian was so impressed that he changed his mind about his prohibition of having any of his books converted into film, and Norton immediately started looking for a Hollywood production company. For the 2003 film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, the role of Surprise was filled by the same replica of HMS Rose, which was purchased by the film studio and extensively modified at Baja Studios to resemble the original Surprise for the role.
The book HMS Surprise by O’Brian also mentions Aubrey being a midshipman aboard Surprise. The series has the Surprise in service until O’Brian’s extended fictional year of 1812, using the latitude of fiction in The Reverse of the Medal. In that era, the Royal Navy commissioned a 38-gun frigate by this name in September 1812.
The fictional Surprise is sold out of the service in The Reverse of the Medal, being purchased by Stephen Maturin and employed first as a letter of marque and later as His Majesty’s hired ship Surprise under Aubrey’s command. Maturin agrees to sell the Surprise to Aubrey in The Nutmeg of Consolation, though later novels suggest that never transpired and Maturin continued to own the ship. Surprise’s ultimate fictional fate is unknown although she was still at sea in 1817 when Aubrey receives news of his promotion to Rear-Admiral of the Blue in her great cabin at the end of Blue at the Mizzen, the last completed novel in the series.
The Surprise public house in Chelsea, London, established in 1853, is named after the ship with the pub sign containing an image of the ship.
Our kit version of Surprise has been developed to depict first and foremost the Surprise in Patrick O’Brian novels and not the film version. The film version is much smaller than the real (and fictional) Surprise, as this was based on a 20-gun Seaford Class ship from the 1750’s, with a gun deck length around 20 foot shorter than the real Surprise with less main deck gun port piercings and substantially fewer upper deck guns. (Although Surprise was classed as a 28-gun frigate, she actually carried up to 40 guns in total).
