HMS Firefly explained

At least seven vessels of the Royal Navy have borne the name HMS Firefly:

• , was a vessel built in Bermuda that the Royal Navy purchased there in 1801. She was the former John Gordon, which probably had been a privateer.^[1] British Admiralty records list an armed ship built in Bermuda in 1801, and purchased in 1803.
• was the French privateer schooner Poisson Volant, of 130 tons (bm), which the Royal Navy captured in 1803. She was wrecked on 17 November 1807 off Curacao; no survivors.
• was a 14-gun schooner, the ex-Spanish prize Antelope captured in February 1808 and purchased. She was renamed HMS Antelope in 1812, or possibly in 1809, and was broken up in 1814.
• , a schooner wrecked on 27 February 1835 on the Northern Triangles, off Belize with the loss of thirteen of her 23 crew.^{[2] [3]}
• , a Firefly-class gunboat, re-engined in 1844 with the engine from and became a survey ship. She was broken up at Malta in 1866.
• , a British .
• , a British that the Ottomans captured but that the British recaptured at the Battle of Nahr-al-Kalek in February 1917.
• , a British trawler that operated between 1930 and 1961, and that between September 1939 to October 1945 served as a minesweeper.

Notes and References

1. "Royal Naval Ships built in Bermuda", (1961), Bermuda Historical Quarterly, vol 18 no2.
2. (untitled) . 28 May 1835 . 3 . 15802 . B .
3. Book: Gilly. William O.S.. Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy: between 1793 and 1849, by William Octavius Shakespeare Gilly. 1850. John W. Parker, West Strand. London. 27 February 2015.