HMS Dauntless (1808)

The second HMS Dauntless was a Cormorant-class ship-sloop of the Royal Navy. She was sold in 1823.

Construction
Dauntless was built in Deptford Dockyard as a Cormorant-class ship-sloop. She was launched on 20 December 1808 and commissioned in July 1809.

Operational history
Her first service was in November 1809, when she escorted a convoy to the African coast, returning in early 1810 to cruise against enemy shipping in the North Sea and to escort convoys to North Russia. In the autumn of 1811 she was sent to the Cork Station.

After refitting at Portsmouth in early 1814 she served on the Newfoundland Station. On 22 May Dauntless and HMS Cyane (1806) were in company when they recaptured the Aeolus.

In January 1816, as the Royal Navy contracted after the end of the Napoleonic Wars, she paid off at Portsmouth.

In November 1818, she was recommissioned for service in the East Indies. Over the next five years, Dauntless visited China, New Zealand, South America, the Pacific archipelagos and New South Wales. Her Captain, George Gambier, in company with members of the Philosophical Society of Australasia fixed a suitably engraved bronze tablet on a "beetling rock" on the south head of Botany Bay to commemorate the first landing of Captain James Cook and Sir Joseph Banks in Australia in 1770. The tablet has not been seen for some years. Dauntless sailed through Torres Strait to Trincomalee to rejoin the fleet, and returned to Portsmouth to pay off in October 1823.

Fate
She was sold for breaking in 1825.