Cyrus-class post ship

Class overview
Name:	Cyrus-class post ships
Operators:	Royal Navy
Completed:	16
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General characteristics
Type:	Sixth-rate post ship (later rated as ship sloops)
Tons burthen:	454 80/94 (as designed)
Length:	115 ft 6 in (35.20 m) (gundeck) 97 ft 2 in (29.62 m) (keel)
Beam:	29 ft 8 in (9.04 m)
Depth of hold:	8 ft 6 in (2.59 m)
Propulsion:	Sail
Sail plan:	Full rigged ship
Complement:	135
Armament:	UD: 20 × 32-pounder carronades and 2 × 6-pounder chase guns

The Cyrus-class sixth rates of the Royal Navy were a series of sixteen post ships built to an 1812 design by Sir William Rule, the Surveyor of the Navy. The first nine ships of the class were launched in 1813 and the remaining seven in 1814. The vessels of the class served at the end of the Napoleonic War. They were built on the lines of HMS Hermes, which was based in turn on the French ship Bonne Citoyenne.

The Cyrus class was intended to be the counter to the new Frolic class ship-rigged sloops that were under construction for the United States Navy. No encounter took place between any vessel of the Frolic class and one of the Cyrus class, but HMS Levant was captured by the American frigate USS Constitution

With the re-organisation of the rating stystem which took place in the Royal Navy effective from 1 January 1817, the Cyrus class flush-decked ships were re-classified as 20-gun sloops.

Ships in class

Name	Ordered	Builder	Laid down	Launched	Completed	Fate
Medina	18 November 1812	Edward Adams, Bucklers Hard	January 1813	13 August 1813	20 December 1813 at Portsmouth Dockyard	Sold to be broken up at Rotherhithe in 1832.
Cyrus	18 November 1812	William Courtney, Chester
Levant	18 November 1812	William Courtney, Chester
Esk	18 November 1812	Jabez Bailey, Ipswich
Carron	18 November 1812	Edward Adams, Bucklers Hard
Tay	18 November 1812	Balthazar Adams, Bucklers Hard
Slaney	18 November 1812	Josiah & Thomas Brindley, Frindsbury
Erne	18 November 1812	Robert Newman, Dartmouth
Leven	18 November 1812	Jabez Bailey, Ipswich
Falmouth	18 November 1812	Richard Chapman, Bideford
Cyrene	18 November 1812	Richard Chapman, Bideford
Bann	18 November 1812	John King, Upnor
Spey	18 November 1812	James Warwick, Eling, Southampton
Lee	18 November 1812	Josiah & Thomas Brindley, Frindsbury
Hind	18 November 1812	Robert Davy, Topsham, Exeter
Larne	18 November 1812	William Bottomley, King's Lynn

References

• Gardiner, Robert (1996). The Naval War of 1812. Caxton pictorial history. ISBN 1-84067-360-5. 
• Rif Winfield, British Warships in the Age of Sail, 1793-1817, Chatham Publishing, London 2005.