HMS Exmouth was a 91-gun screw-propelled second-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy.
HMS Exmouth was ordered on 12 March 1840 as a 90-gun sailing ship from Devonport Dockyard, where her keel was laid on 13 September 1841.[1] After over a decade on the stocks, on 30 October 1852 she was ordered to be completed as a 91-gun two-decker with steam screw propulsion, and conversion began on 20 June 1853.[2]
On 12 July 1854 Exmouth was launched by the daughter of Admiral Stopford, Admiral-superintendent of the dockyard, in the presence of a crowd estmated at 2–3,000.[2] [3] She was fitted out at Devonport Dockyard, and finally commissioned for service on 15 March 1855, having cost a total of £146,067, with £76,379 being spent on the hull as a sailing ship, and a further £24,620 spent on the machinery.
In 1855, during the later stages of the Crimean War, she served in the Baltic Sea as flagship of Sir Michael Seymour.[4] On 12 May 1857, Exmouth ran aground in Crewgreace bay, west of The Lizard, Cornwall. She was refloated. Her captain, Harry Ayres was convicted of negligence by a Court Martial and was admonished. Her master, Edward Fancourt Cavell was also convicted. He was sentenced to be reprimanded and admonished.[5] She was a guard ship at Devonport by 1859, when future admiral Robert Spencer Robinson was her captain between 1 February 1858 and May 1859.
From 1877, the Admiralty lent Exmouth to the Metropolitan Asylums Board as a training ship, based at Grays, Essex, replacing the similar Goliath, which had been destroyed by fire in December 1875.[6] These ships were recommended for boys supervised by the poor law authorities as an economic means of providing them with a career which also benefited the country.[7] [8]
Exmouth was sold by the Admiralty to George Cohen on 4 April 1905 and then broken up at Penarth, South Wales.