HMS Sparrow

Eight ships of the Royal Navy have borne the name HMS Sparrow, after the sparrow:


 * HMS Sparrow was a pink captured in 1653 and sold in 1659.
 * HMS Sparrow was a 12-gun cutter purchased from civilian service in 1796 when she had been named Rattler. She was broken up in 1805.
 * HMS Sparrow was a 16-gun brig-sloop launched in 1805 and sold in 1816.
 * HMS Sparrow was a 10-gun cutter launched in 1828. She was used as a survey ketch from 1844 and was broken up in 1860.
 * HMS Sparrow was a wood screw Philomel class gunvessel launched in 1860 and broken up in 1868.
 * HMS Sparrow was a composite screw gunboat launched in 1889. She was transferred to the New Zealand government in 1906 as the training ship NZS Amokura. She was sold as a coal hulk in 1922 and was broken up in 1958.
 * HMS Sparrow was a trawler purchased from civilian service in 1909 when she had been named Josephine and refitted as a minesweeper. She was sold back into civilian service in 1920 and broken up in 1939.
 * HMS Sparrow was a modified Black Swan class sloop, launched in 1946 and scrapped in 1958.

Battle honours

 * San Sebastián 1813
 * Korea 1953

Fiction
The novel "Sloop of War" by Alexander Kent features a sloop-of-war named HMS Sparrow.