HMS Decoy (1810)
1810 Decoy-class cutter
HMS Decoy was launched in 1810. She participated in the capture of several small French privateers, captured or recaptured a number of merchant vessels, and captured a number of smuggling vessels. The French captured her in 1814.
Career
Lieutenant John Pearce (or Pearse) commissioned Decoy in May 1810 for the Channel.
On 6 November 1810 Decoy, recaptured Lord Boringdon, which was an old, 194 ton (bm), Danish-built vessel that normally sailed between Plymouth and Lisbon. The salvage money notice referred to Decoy as "His Majesty's hired Cutter", an erroneous assumption based on the fact that most of the cutters serving the navy at the time were hired armed vessels.
As with the revenue cutters, Decoy also captured smugglers. On 23 May she captured the boat Dart, and on 4 June, the boat Bee.
On 30 December Decoy recovered some 25 bags of cotton, some marked "W. Hampton". A week or so later two fishing boats and HMS Kangaroo also brought in similar bales of cotton.
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This entry incorporates text from “HMS Decoy (1810)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.