HMS Black Joke

Only one ship of the Royal Navy has borne the name HMS Black Joke. The Black Joke was an old tune later known as The Sprig of Shillelagh. Thomas Moore (1779–1852) wrote the song "Sublime was the warning which Liberty spoke" to the tune.


 * HMS Black Joke, the captured slave ship Henriquetta, commissioned in 1827, was employed in suppressing the slave trade and deliberately burnt as no longer serviceable in 1832 on orders from London.

However, the Royal Navy did also employ two hired vessels with the name Black Joke:


 * Black Joke was an hired armed cutter of ten 6-pounder guns and 98 86/94 tons burthen (bm) that served from 12 January 1795 to 19 October 1801. In 1799 she was renamed Suworow (or Suwarrow or Soworrow). Reportedly she burned in 1802.


 * Black Joke was an hired armed lugger of ten 12-pounder carronades and 108 92/94 tons burthen (bm) that entered into Naval service on 22 May 1808. On 1 July 1810 the French captured Black Joke in the Channel.

These two vessels may have been the same. In his narrative of his voyages in the Mediterranean between 1810 and 1814, Charles Robert Cockerell reports that the lugger was an old vessel, having been at the Battle of Camperdown, which is consistent with the earliest mentions of the cutter.


 * Furthermore, there was a lugger Black Joke that received a letter of marque on 5 May 1801. She was of 25 tons burthen, had two 2-pounder guns and was under the command of Captain Phillip Dupont.