HMS Wellesley (1815)

Wellesley sailing along a rocky coastline
History
United Kingdom
Name:	HMS Wellesley
Namesake:	Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington
Ordered:	3 September 1812
Builder:	Bombay Dockyard
Laid down:	May 1813
Launched:	24 February 1815
Renamed:	TS Cornwall, 1868
Honours and awards:	China 1840–42
Fate:	Sunk by bombing, 1940
General characteristics
Class and type:	Officially part of the Black Prince class, but built to the lines of the Vengeur class
Tons burthen:	1745  75⁄94 (bm)
Length:	175 ft 10 3⁄4 in (53.6 m) (o/a); 1,145 ft 11 1⁄2 in (349.3 m) (keel)
Beam:	47 ft 7 in (14.5 m)
Depth of hold:	21 ft (6.4 m)
Sail plan:	Full-rigged ship
Armament:	Gundeck: 28 × 32-pounder guns Upper gundeck: 28 × 18-pounder guns QD: 4 × 12-pounder guns + 10 × 32-pounder carronades Fc: 2 × 12-pounder guns + 2 × 32-pounder carronades Poop deck: 6 × 18-pounder carronades

HMS Wellesley was a 74-gun third rate, named after the Duke of Wellington, and launched in 1815. She captured Karachi for the British, and participated in the First Opium War, which resulted in Britain gaining control of Hong Kong. Thereafter she served primarily as a training ship before gaining the distinction of being the last British ship of the line to be sunk by enemy action and the only one to have been sunk by an air-raid.

While Wellesley was ordered as a Black Prince-class ship of the line, plans meant for her construction were lost in December 1812 when USS Constitution captured HMS Java. She was therefore built to the lines of HMS Cornwallis, a Vengeur-class ship of the line which had just been launched at Bombay. The East India Company built her of teak, at a cost of £55,147, for the Royal Navy and launched her on 24 February 1815 at Bombay Dockyard.

In 1823 Wellesley carried Sir Charles Stuart de Rothesay on a mission to Portugal and Brazil to negotiate a commercial treaty with Pedro I of Brazil. The artist Charles Landseer, brother of the famed artist Edwin Henry Landseer, accompanied the mission.

Between 25 November 1824 and 30 January 1825, her tender, Wolf, took several prizes, for which prize money was payable.