HMS Gorgon (1785)

Perry & Hankey, Blackwall

911 tons builder's measurement

140 feet

38 feet 3 inches

16 feet 10 inches

300 ( as a warship )

As a warship: 20 x 18 -pounder 22 x 12 -pounder 2 x 6 -pounder As a transport ship ( 1793): 16 x 9- pounder 4 x 6 -pounder

HMS Gorgon was built as a 44 -gun two-decker of the Adventure class and was assigned as a warship in 5th position.

Rebuilt the supply ship she sailed under Captain John Parker in March 1791 with the Third Fleet, the third British fleet with target Australia, and arrived there on 21 September. She brought food for 6 months for 900 people in the starving colony and was greeted enthusiastically received at their arrival. Also, on board were 30 convicts and Philip Gidley King, who returned from England to take up his post as vice-governor of Norfolk Iceland.

On 18 December 1791, the Gorgon Port Jackson left with a part of the employed to guard the arrived with the First Fleet convicts Royal Marines, including Watkin Tench, Robert Ross, William Dawes and Ralph Clark. They also carried a sample of animals, birds and plants of New South Wales.

At the Cape of Good Hope they also also took Mary Bryant, her daughter Charlotte and four male survivors of the first successful breakout from the British penal colony Australia on board, four mutineers of the Bounty, who had been taken prisoner in Tahiti from the HMS Pandora and their shipwreck survived. During the trip, many of the children on board died, including Charlotte Bryant, to heat and diseases. The Gorgon sailed into Portsmouth on 21 June 1792.

Later, the Gorgon in the Mediterranean Sea, the Irish Sea and the Baltic Sea was among other things as a guard, transportation, storage and hospital ship. 1817, the ship was scrapped in Portsmouth.