HMS Raleigh (1873): The Frigate Built to Show the Flag, Not Fight the Line

Laid Down at Chatham for a Different Kind of War

HMS Raleigh was built at Chatham Dockyard to a design by Sir Edward Reed, launched on 1 March 1873 and commissioned on 13 January 1874. She was an unarmoured, iron-hulled screw frigate of some 5,200 tons, one of a small group of large independently designed cruising frigates of the era alongside HMS Inconstant and HMS Shah, related in concept rather than formally sister ships.

Carrying twenty-two guns, a full sailing rig and a single-shaft steam engine capable of an impressive 16.2 knots, she was deliberately built without the heavy armour plating of a contemporary ironclad, a design choice that reflected her intended role.

Ships like Raleigh existed not to slug it out in a line of battle but to show the British flag on distant stations around the globe, trading protection for speed and endurance, which suited the Royal Navy's imperial policing duties considerably better than another slow, heavily armoured brawler ever could have.

George Tryon and the Detached Squadron

Raleigh's first captain, from 1874 to 1877, was George Tryon, who took her on the Detached, or Flying, Squadron cruise of 1875, an extended world tour calling at Gibraltar, Madeira, Montevideo, the Falkland Islands, the Cape of Good Hope, St Helena, Bombay, Colombo, Trincomalee and Calcutta.

During her travels she also transported Sir Garnet Wolseley to Natal and escorted the Prince of Wales's own voyage to India, exactly the kind of prestige, flag-showing work she had been designed for.

There is a rather sharp irony in Tryon's own later career worth noting here, since he went on to command HMS Victoria and died in her in the infamous 1893 collision with HMS Camperdown, reportedly with the words It is all my fault, a stark contrast to the largely uneventful and well-handled command he exercised over Raleigh nearly two decades earlier.

A Brief Grounding off the Dardanelles

In 1878 Raleigh ran aground near the Rabbit Islands off the Dardanelles, an incident that could easily have ended her career early, but she was refloated within days and sent to Malta for repairs, a minor scare rather than a lasting setback.

Flagship on the Cape and West Africa Station

Raleigh went on to serve twice as flagship on the Cape of Good Hope and West Africa Station, first from 1885 to 1888 and again from 1890 to 1893, years of steady, unglamorous imperial patrol work along one of the Royal Navy's more demanding and disease-prone overseas stations.

Tragedy at Madina Creek

The darkest chapter in Raleigh's career came on 23 February 1894, during an expedition against the slave raider Fodi Silah on the Gambia River. A naval brigade of around 220 to 225 bluejackets landed from Raleigh and other vessels under Captain Edward Gamble was ambushed at Madina Creek.

Eighteen men were killed, including two lieutenants, and a further forty-six to forty-nine were wounded, with at least one officer's body reportedly beheaded and taken as a trophy by the raiders, a grim detail that deserves to be recorded honestly rather than smoothed over for the sake of a lighter narrative.

It stands as a stark reminder that the unglamorous patrol duties these cruising frigates were built for could turn lethal without warning, and that the men who served aboard ships like Raleigh faced real danger even in engagements history has largely forgotten.

Future Admirals in the Gunroom

Among the midshipmen who served aboard Raleigh during her career were two officers who would go on to considerably higher rank and fame, Roger Keyes and William Fisher, both future admirals whose careers would eventually take them far beyond the gunroom of a Victorian cruising frigate, a reminder that ships like Raleigh doubled as finishing schools for the officers who would lead the Royal Navy into the twentieth century.

A Quiet End, and a Case of Mistaken Identity

HMS Raleigh was not wrecked, and it is worth being clear about that, since a very different, much more dramatic story is sometimes attached to her name.

That story in fact belongs to a later, entirely separate ship, the Hawkins-class cruiser HMS Raleigh of 1919, which ran aground off Labrador in August 1922 with the loss of twelve lives and was later deliberately demolished with depth charges under a young captain named Andrew Cunningham, who would go on to become one of the Second World War's most celebrated admirals.

This earlier Raleigh, the 1873 frigate, met a far less dramatic fate, remaining in reserve and training duties before being sold to Thos. W. Ward of Morecambe for breaking up on 11 July 1905, a quietly unremarkable finish for a ship whose career had, at times, been anything but.