Cyrus-class ship-sloop

Class overview
Name	Cyrus-class post ships
Operators	Royal Navy
Completed	16
General characteristics
Type	Sixth-rate post ship
Tons burthen	454 80/94 (as designed)
Length	115 ft 6 in (35.20 m) (gundeck) 97 ft 2 in (29.62 m) (keel)
Beam	29 ft 8 in (9.04 m)
Propulsion	Sail
Sail plan	Full rigged ship
Complement	135.
Armament	UD: 20 × 32-pounder carronades and 2 × 6-pounder guns

The Cyrus-class sixth rates of the Royal Navy were a series of sixteen post ships built to an 1812 design by Sir William Rule, the Surveyor of the Navy. The first nine ships of the class were launched in 1813 and the remaining seven in 1814. The vessels of the class served at the end of the Napoleonic War. They were built on the lines of HMS Hermes, which was based in turn on the French ship Bonne Citoyenne.

The Cyrus class was intended to be the counter to the new Frolic class ship-rigged sloops that were under construction for the United States Navy. No encounter took place between any vessel of the Frolic class and one of the Cyrus class, but HMS Levant was captured by the American frigate USS Constitution

With the re-organisation of the rating stystem which took place in the Royal Navy effective from 1 January 1817, the Cyrus class flush-decked ships were re-classified as 20-gun sloops.

Ships in class

Name	Ordered	Builder	Laid down	Launched	Completed	Fate
Medina	18 November 1812	Edward Adams, Bucklers Hard	January 1813	13 August 1813	20 December 1813 at Portsmouth Dockyard	Sold to be broken up at Rotherhithe in 1832.

• HMS Cyrus
• HMS Levant
• HMS Esk
• HMS Carron
• HMS Tay
• HMS Slaney
• HMS Erne
• HMS Leven
• HMS Falmouth
• HMS Cyrene
• HMS Bann
• HMS Spey
• HMS Lee
• HMS Hind
• HMS Larne

References

• Gardiner, Robert (1996). The Naval War of 1812. Caxton pictorial history. ISBN 1-84067-360-5.
• Rif Winfield, British Warships in the Age of Sail, 1793-1817, Chatham Publishing, London 2005.