HMS Dee (1832)

HMS Dee was a paddle steamer that served in the Royal Navy from June 1832 to June 1871. She was the first steam vessel planned to carry a significant armament ordered by the Royal Navy.

Woolwich dockyard laid down a sailing ship as HMS Dee in 1825. This vessel seems to have been cancelled, and the paddle steamer HMS Dee was ordered in 1827 in her place. Some books state that the paddle steamer was a conversion on the stocks from a sailing vessel; this view is mistaken.

Her design was by Robert Seppings, as modified by Oliver Lang. Fincham describes her as being built on lines supplied by Lang. She was built at Woolwich dockyard, and cost £27,000.

She was initially classified as a "steam vessel"; in 1837 she was reclassified as an "SV Class 2", and reclassified in 1846 as a second-class sloop.

She became a troopship in May 1842, and 1855. As a troopship in 1855 she had "a topgallant forecastle for her crew and a poop and deckhouse aft." She became an unarmed storeship in 1868, and was broken up at Sheerness in 1871.

Armament
Her armament as a steam vessel or sloop changed over time:
 * 2 x 18-pounder 22 cwt guns on pivot mounts (initial).
 * 4 x 32-pounder 63 cwt and 2 x 32-pounder 56 cwt, all on pivot mounts (later).
 * 4 x 32-pounder 63 cwt and 1 x 10-inch 86 cwt, all on pivot mounts (final).

Propulsion
The paddle wheels were 20 ft diameter. Her engine was of the two-cylinder side-lever type of 200 nominal horse power, made by Maudslay, Sons and Field, and producing 272 ihp. Her cylinders were 54 in diameter, with a 5 foot length of stroke. Steam was from tubular boilers at 3.5 psi above atmospheric pressure. The Science Museum, London has a model of the Dee's engine. When the paddle wheels turned 18 revolutions per minute, she had a maximum speed of 8 kn. In 1856, the Dee and the yacht Black Eagle were used in a trial of J Wethered's apparatus for superheated steam. This produced an economy of fuel of 18% in the Black Eagle, and 31% in the Dee. In 1866, she was given a new 220 nominal horse power engine.

One of her captains described her as "very slow and steers very wild being trimmed by the stern. Using after coals first improves her.  She rolls very deep and always uneasy.  Cannot carry quarter boats in a moderate beam sea."

Commissions
The Dee was in commission:
 * 9 June 1832 – 27 May 1834, when the steamers Dee and Rhadamanthus were part of a Royal Navy force including three line-of-battle ships and ten other sailing ships that blockaded the Dutch ports in 1832. This was in support of the French Army, which had intervened in the Belgian Revolution in support of the Belgians against the Dutch, and intervened again to besiege the Dutch garrison of Antwerp.  "The two steamers had been particularly useful in the narrow channels of the Dutch estuaries with their fast tidal currents."
 * 9 February 1838 – 22 May 1841.
 * 30 May 1842 – 5 January 1845; for at least some of this time as a troopship.
 * 25 May 1845 – 10 January 1852.
 * 14 September 1852 – 20 September 1853.
 * 1 October 1853 – 21 February 1862; She served as a troopship for at least part of this time. The 1861 Census shows her standing in Plymouth Sound, en route from the Clyde to Chatham, carrying a number of Royal Marines and their families.
 * 12 June 1863 – 31 March 1868.
 * 1 July 1868 – 17 June 1871, as a storeship.