Qualla: HMS Speedwell (1815)

HMS Speedwell (1815): Introduction

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On 5 March 1826, Lieutenant James Cooper Bennett spotted a grounded vessel near Grass-cut Cay on the Grand Bahama Banks. Aboard the stranded ship Orestes, 238 captive Africans had been abandoned by their captors, left for days without food or water on an exposed reef. Bennett commanded HMS Speedwell, a five-gun schooner small enough to thread the shallow channels of the Bahamas, and he loaded every one of those survivors onto his own vessel. It was one episode in a career that spanned pirate raids, joint operations with American revenue cutters, and the grim work of intercepting the transatlantic slave trade.

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HMS Speedwell (1815): From Merchant Hull to Man-of-War

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Speedwell began life as the mercantile Royal George, a civilian vessel the Royal Navy purchased in 1815 and spent seven months fitting out at Sheerness. By March 1816 she was rigged as a five-gun schooner and dispatched to the Jamaica Station as a tender to the flagship. She was ...

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HMS Speedwell (1815): Pirate Hunter of the West Indies

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The 1820s were the golden age of Caribbean piracy's last gasp, and Speedwell was in the thick of it. Working alongside the United States Revenue Cutter Service, she joined an expedition that broke up a pirate establishment at Bahia Honda Key in September 1822, capturing four vess...

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HMS Speedwell (1815): The Human Toll of the Slave Trade

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Speedwell's encounters with slave ships revealed horrors that no amount of naval discipline could prepare a crew for. When Bennett reached the grounded Orestes in March 1826, the ship's master, Don Jose Ramon Munio, and his crew had fled to a nearby cay, abandoning the 238 people...

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HMS Speedwell (1815): Sold for Scrap at Jamaica

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

By the early 1830s, Speedwell had been patrolling Caribbean waters for nearly two decades. In January 1834, the Navy sold her at Jamaica for 344 pounds and ten shillings. It was an unremarkable end for a vessel that had been part of an international effort to suppress both piracy...

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