London Packet (1791 ship)
1791 ship hired by the Royal Navy
London Packet was a merchant vessel launched on the Thames in 1791. She served the Royal Navy as a hired armed ship from 31 March 1793, to at least 30 September 1800, and despite some records, apparently for a year or more beyond that. She then returned to sailing as a merchantman until an American privateer captured her in May 1814.
Merchantman
London Packet entered Lloyd's Register (LR) in 1791.
Hired armed ship
London Packet was commissioned in April 1793
under Lieutenant J.E. Douglas. Then from May 1794 or so, Lieutenant James Fegan (or Fogan) was captain, with A. Hill as master, at least in 1799.
On 27 February 1795 Lloyd's List (LL) reported that the armed ship London Packet had recaptured Monmouth, Blackburn, master. Monmouth had been sailing from Jamaica to London when the French had captured her. Unfortunately, Monmouth was then lost on the rocks at the Isles of Scilly with two of her crew members being drowned.
London Packet otherwise appears to have had a relatively uneventful career on the Liverpool to Channel station, escorting convoys until at least late 1801.
“London Packet (1791 ship)” enters the record as 1791 ship hired by the Royal Navy. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what London, Packet and ship can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16996890. The first chronological checks are 1791, 1793, 1800 and 1814.
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This entry incorporates text from “London Packet (1791 ship)” 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.