HMS Saldanha (1809)

HMS Saldanha was a 36-gun fifth-rate Apollo-class frigate of the Royal Navy. She was commissioned in April 1810 and spent her entire career serving on the Irish Station, including capturing a fast-sailing French privateer on 11 October 1811. In the evening of 4 December that year Saldanha was serving off Lough Swilly when she was caught in a storm. Last seen sailing off Fanad Head, the ship was wrecked in a nearby bay with every person on board being killed and the only survivors being a parrot and a dog. The wreck was memorialised by Thomas Sheridan in his poem The Loss of the Saldanha.

Design
Saldanha was a 36-gun, 18-pounder Apollo-class frigate. Designed by Surveyor of the Navy Sir William Rule, the Apollo class originally consisted of three ships constructed between 1798 and 1803. The class formed part of the Royal Navy's response to the French Revolutionary Wars and need for more warships to serve in it. The original Apollo design was then revived at the start of the Napoleonic Wars in 1803, with twenty-four ships ordered to it over the next nine years. This order came about as the threat from the French fleet against Britain began to dissipate, especially after the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. The Royal Navy stopped ordering specifically large and offensively capable warships, and instead focused on standardised classes of ships that were usually more moderate in size, but through larger numbers would be able to effectively combat the expected increase in global economic warfare.

The Apollo class became the standard frigate design for this task, alongside the Vengeur-class ship of the line and Cruizer-class brig-sloop. The Apollo class was chosen to fulfil the role of standardised frigate because of how well the lone surviving ship of the first batch, HMS Euryalus (1803), had performed, providing "all-round excellence" according to naval historian Robert Gardiner. Trials of ships of the class showed that they were all capable of reaching around 12 kn and were very well balanced, although prone to pitching deeply in heavy seas. They also had a high storage capacity, allowing for upwards of six months' provisions. The biggest drawback of the class was that after about six weeks of service, when stores had been used up and the ships were riding higher in the water, the ships became far less weatherly.

Construction
In this second batch of Apollo-class frigates, half were ordered to be built at commercial shipyards and half at Royal Navy Dockyards. Saldanha, in the former group of ships, was ordered on 1 October 1806 to be built by shipwright Simon Temple at South Shields. She was the sixth frigate to be ordered to the renewed design.

Saldanha was laid down in March 1807 and launched on 8 December 1809 with the following dimensions: 144 ft along the upper deck, 121 ft at the keel, with a beam of 38 ft and a depth in the hold of 13 ft. The ship measured 951$29⁄94$ tons burthen. She was named after the British victory at the capitulation of Saldanha Bay, being the second vessel to take the name.

After her launching Saldanha was fitted out at Chatham Dockyard, sailing from there on 6 July 1810. With a crew complement of 264, the frigate held twenty-six 18-pounder long guns on her upper deck. Complementing this armament were ten 32-pounder carronades and two 9-pounder long guns on the quarterdeck, with an additional two 9-pounder long guns and four 32-pounder carronades on the forecastle.

Service
Saldanha was first commissioned in April 1810 under Captain John Stuart, serving on the Irish Station. On 3 February 1811 a boat from Saldanha was returning to the ship off Rathmullan with casks of water, when it was overturned by a wave. The midshipman commanding the boat and seven of its crew drowned, while the remaining four survived by clinging to the floating oars and casks. While in Lough Swilly on 19 March Stuart died on board Saldanha. Later in the same month Captain William Pakenham replaced him in command of the frigate. Pakenham's tenure was briefly interrupted in the Spring, with Captain Reuben Mangin temporarily assuming command in his absence. On 29 August Saldanha detained the American ship Favourite as she sailed from Dublin to New York, sending her in to Cork, because the vessel was carrying too many passengers.

Saldanha was sent to sea alongside the 36-gun frigate HMS Fortunee (1800) on 25 September in an attempt to intercept a group of French frigates that were thought to be returning to Europe after being present at the British Invasion of Isle de France. The two ships did not come across the frigates, but on 11 October captured the French 18-gun privateer Vice-Amiral Martin off Cape St. Vincent. The privateer had a crew of 140 men, and had been four days out of Bayonne when she was captured. Captain Henry Vansittart of Fortunee remarked that Vice-Amiral Martin had superior sailing abilities that in the past had helped her escape British cruisers, and though each of the British vessels had been doing 11 kn at the time of the capture, the French ship would have still escaped if Saldanha and Fortunee had not outnumbered her.

Loss
Still serving on the Irish Station, on 19 November Saldanha sailed from Cork to Lough Swilly, where she was to replace the 40-gun frigate HMS Endymion on patrol. Having reached harbour in Lough Swilly, on 30 November Saldanha sailed with Endymion and the 18-gun sloop-of-war HMS Talbot (1807) with the intent to patrol towards the west. From 3 December into the evening of 4 December a storm came in from the north-west, including driving snow. Saldanha was last seen, by her lights, from Talbot at 9:30 p.m. passing Fanad Head; a light was then seen from ashore moving quickly past the Lough Swilly harbour at about 10 p.m.; Saldanha was not sighted again until her wreck was discovered 50 yards off the shore in Ballyna Stoker Bay, within Lough Swilly, the following morning.

There were no human survivors from Saldanha; about 200 bodies, including that of Pakenham, washed up and were buried in a local cemetery. One man was alive when he came ashore, but was very weak, and with no doctor immediately available to help him, when he asked for a drink the locals gave him half a pint of whisky which almost immediately killed him. The ship's dog survived. It was thought that the frigate had been attempting to return to her anchorage in the gale, but had struck the submerged Swilly Rock off the harbour entrance, and then been pushed into Ballyna Stoker Bay by the storm.

Initial reports suggested that Talbot too had been wrecked but these were mistaken; Saldanha had been broken in two as she wrecked and these halves were initially seen as separate vessels. Twenty-one members of Saldanha's crew escaped the disaster, having been left behind on board the hospital ship HMS Trent (1796) when the frigate sailed from Cork.

On 28 August 1812 a servant working at a house in Burt, County Donegal, shot a green parrot, believing it to be a hawk. Upon inspection the parrot was found to have a gold ring around its neck, with the engraving "Captain Pakenham, of His Majesty's ship Saldanha". Bystanders reported that at the time it was shot the parrot had been attempting to speak either French or Spanish; it was listed as the only other survivor of Saldanha, alongside the dog.

Legacy
Saldanha Head, near Knockalla Fort where Saldanha's wreck was discovered, is named after the frigate. The columns inside the Presbyterian meeting house at Ramelton were constructed using material recovered from the frigate, and in the 1980s an anchor was discovered at the wreck site and placed on the shore near that spot. Soon after the wreck, Thomas Sheridan wrote the poem The Loss of the Saldanha, one verse of which states: "O'er Swilly's rocks they soar, Commission'd watch to keep; Down, down with thundering roar The exulting demons pour – The Saldanha floats no more On the deep!" A special ceremony was held on 4 December 2011 to mark the 200th anniversary of the sinking in Lough Swilly of Saldanha. It was the first commemorative event recalling what is one of Ireland's worst ever marine disasters. Until then there had been no memorial to their deaths.