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HMS Ambush (1814)

1805 gunboat

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMar 25, 2026
Entity authorityQ5631302 ↗
Source-derived summary

HMS Ambush, or Ambush No. 5, was the American Gunboat No. 5, launched in 1805. She served in the Mediterranean later that year. The Royal Navy captured her at the Battle of Lake Borgne on 14 December 1814. She was sold in 1815.

US service (1805–14)

Gunboat No. 5 was built in Baltimore by William Price as one of a number of gunboats that President Thomas Jefferson had built for the defense of the United States. Price built her to a design by Josiah Fox, "Head Ship Carpenter and Navy Constructor", and launched her on 1 March 1805. She may have been a double-ender, initially armed with two 32-pounder guns (one fore and one aft).

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “HMS Ambush (1814)” is 1805 gunboat. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Ambush and gunboat, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1805, 1814, 1815—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Ambush and gunboat is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “1805 gunboat” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5631302. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1805, 1814 and 1815.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “HMS Ambush (1814)” 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.