HMS Experiment (1793)
1793 lugger
HMS Experiment was launched in 1793, the only lugger actually designed and built for the British Royal Navy. The Spanish Navy captured her in 1796 near Gibraltar. A British privateer recaptured her in 1806, but the Royal Navy did not take her back into service.
Career
Experiment was the only lugger specifically designed and built for the Royal Navy, and rather unusually, she had three masts. (The Royal Navy did use a number of hired luggers.
Lieutenant George Hayes commissioned Experiment in June 1793. Lloyd's List reported on 7 March 1794 that the lugger Experiment had taken a Danish brig near Calais. The brig had been carrying a cargo of saltpeter, iron, hemp, and potash.
She was one of 14 vessels that shared in the salvage money from the recapture of Walsingham Packet on 27 September 1795. (The actual captors were HMS Minotaur and Porcupine.)
On 1 August 1796 Experiment, Lieutenant G. Hayes, came into Plymouth.
“HMS Experiment (1793)” enters the record as 1793 lugger. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Experiment and lugger can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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