HMS Albatross (1873)

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HMS Albatross (1873) was a Fantome-class sloop of the Royal Navy. Built at Chatham Royal Dockyard, she was laid down in 1872, launched on 27 April 1873 and completed in February 1874. She belonged to a four-gun class and displaced about 949 long tons, measuring around 160 feet in length with a 31 ft 4 in beam and a 14 ft draught. She carried a barque rig and a steam engine with three boilers, delivering about 838 indicated horsepower for a top speed of around 10 knots, with a range of about 1,000 nautical miles at 10 knots. Her crew numbered about 125. Armament consisted of two 7-inch rifled muzzle-loading guns and two 6.3-inch 64-pounder rifled muzzle-loading guns.

In May 1886 she was driven ashore at Hong Kong while going to help the British ship Dafila, which had also run aground. Both ships were refloated, and Albatross towed Dafila to Hoikow.

A decorative scroll for the ship’s bow, not a true figurehead, survives. It stayed at Chatham Dockyard in 1938, moved to HMS Ganges in Shotley, Suffolk around 1949, and, when Ganges closed in 1984, was transferred to the Royal Naval Museum. The carving can be seen in the Figureheads Gallery at the National Museum of the Royal Navy in Portsmouth.

Fate: Scrapped in February 1889.