Archer-class sloop

The Archer-class sloops were a class of two wooden screw sloops built for the Royal Navy in the late 1840s. Both ships served during the Crimean War, Archer in the Baltic, and Wasp in the Black Sea, and they both served on the overseas stations of the British Empire, as far afield as the East Indies and both North and South America. Both played an anti-slavery role off the coasts of West Africa. By 1869 they had both been broken up.

Design
Orders for two s (Archer and Parthian) were placed with Deptford Dockyard on 26 March 1846. They were suspended in September, and re-ordered as sloops on 25 April 1847. Parthian was renamed Wasp while on the stocks on 25 August 1847. They were designed by John Edye and approved by the Surveyor of the Navy's department on 25 August 1847.

The completed ships were fitted with a 2-cylinder single-expansion steam engine driving a single screw. Although both ships had their machinery provided by Miller, Ravenhill & Co, Archers was a horizontal geared steam engine rated at 202 nominal horsepower, while Wasps was a vertical oscillating engine rated at 100 nominal horsepower. On trials Archer developed 347 ihp, achieving 7.8 kn, and while Wasp developed only 280 ihp, she was able to achieve a speed of nearly 8.2 kn. The armament consisted of two 68-pounder (87cwt) guns, and ten 32-pounder (42cwt) muzzle-loading guns in a broadside arrangement.

Construction
Both ships were built at Deptford Dockyard. Both ships were laid down in October 1847, with Archer launched on 27 March 1849, and Wasp on 28 May 1850. Although Archer was sheathed in copper beneath the waterline, as was the normal practice for wooden warships, Wasp was sheathed in Muntz metal, an alloy of copper and zinc. In both cases the purpose was to restrict the growth of marine fouling.

Archer
Archer was commissioned on 9 March 1850 at Devonport and served on the West Africa Squadron and then from Leith in Scotland on the Fishery Protection Squadron. She decommissioned at Woolwich in November 1853 and was recommissioned in February 1854 for service in the Baltic during the war with Russia. After the of the war she served on the North America and West Indies Station. Her second commission ended in June 1857 when she was decommissioned at Woolwich. From 1859 to 1866 she served two more commissions on the west coast of Africa. This service involved anti-slavery work on the coasts of the Bight of Benin, and was notoriously unhealthy, with tropical diseases taking a heavy toll of British seamen - between 1858 and 1866, of her five commanding officers, one died and two were invalided home. Archer was sold to Castle of Charlton for breaking, and was broken up in March 1866.

Archer was reclassified as a corvette in 1862, although her sister officially remained a sloop.

Wasp
Wasp was commissioned on 26 October 1850 at Woolwich for service with her sister ship on the West Africa Station. Like Archer, she served during the Crimean War, but in the Black Sea in 1854 and 1855, commanded by Lord John Hay. She paid off at Sheerness in January 1856 and was recommissioned in July the same year for service on the south-east coast of America. She recommissioned for the third time at Sheerness in April 1860 for service at the Cape of Good Hope. She ran aground twice during the commission, once between Table Bay and Simon's Town in South Africa on 25 August 1860, which required a docking in Mauritius, and again off the coast of modern-day Mozambique, about 35 nmi south of Cape Delgado in late January 1861. She was aground for a week or more, and the damage to the engines precluded their use for the rest of the commission. She returned to the UK and was decommissioned at Portsmouth in December 1861; given the damage, it is not surprising that she was not recommissioned until November 1863, this time for service in the East Indies. She returned to Portsmouth in April 1868 for the end of her last commission. On 2 December 1869 she was sold to C. Marshall for breaking up at Plymouth.