HMS Vulcan (1849)

HMS Vulcan was an iron-hulled screw frigate of the British Royal Navy. Launched in 1849, she was converted to a troopship in 1851, and sold in 1867 as the barque Jorawur. Weighing 1,747 tons she had 14 gunports, was fitted with fore, main and mizzen masts, a funnel, a stump bowsprit, and a figurehead depicting a male figure holding a hammer. Following a trial on a target representing the side of the ship, it was decided that iron vessels were unsuitable for war purposes, and so Vulcan was completed as a transport.

Ship history
From 1852 until 1855 she was under the command of Edward Pelham Brenton von Donop.

Edward Sholto Douglas, R.N., son of the late Major Sholto Douglas, and nephew of the Marchioness of Queensberry, master of HMS Winchester (1822), from which ship he was invalided at Rangoon, was lost from HMS Vulcan off Ascension Island on 27 February 1853. His body was recovered and he was buried on the island.

During the Crimean War, Vulcan operated in the Black Sea, transporting wounded troops from the battle of the Alma to Constantinople in September 1854, and returning with reinforcements in November. A year later, in November 1855, she was taking Russian prisoners to Constantinople.

In May 1858 HMS Vulcan carried 18 officers, 30 sergeants, 16 drummers, and 499 men (also 37 women and 38 children) of the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Regiment of Foot (The Buffs), from England to Malta.

Augustus Chetham Strode was appointed to command her in 1859 to serve in the East Indies and China Station, seeing action in combined operations under the command of Brigadier general Charles William Dunbar Staveley during the Taiping Rebellion in 1862.