Joseph Byrne

Thank you so much guys for all your assistance and good luck with your model, iMustBeCrazy. It has been so enjoyable reading all your posts. I hadn't anticipated getting as much detail as I have in relation to Lapwing. I will post again with the relevant text when the bio is completed. Take care.

Thank you bruce d and especially iMustBeCrazy for such a detailed response to my query. The officer I am researching is Lt Thomas Ross, a Corkman, and Lt Raymond's immediate predecessor as commander of the Lapwing, cutter. It was Ross's first and only command. He joined the Lapwing on 6 July 1832, was promoted Commander on 19 April 1833 and was replaced by Raymond on 31 May 1833. The next time I make it to the National Archives, London, I will examine the Lapwing logs more fully but for the moment I have tried to tease out the issues raised via a newspaper trawl. Like you, iMustBeCrazy, I cannot reconcile the dating of the Lapwing plan to 1817 and the construction of further cutters in the same class in successive years with newspaper reports of the movement of Lapwing, cutter, from 1808 right down to the 1830s. Lapwing, cutter, was almost continuously in service from 1808 when she first appears so styled. She was driven ashore at Mill Bay in late January 1817 but was repaired on a slip and ready to be launched by 1 March (Royal Cornwall Gazette, 1 March 1817) and had a busy year of cruising thereafter. (Lt Thomas Lipson, who has an Australian link, as you say iMustBeCrazy, was commander of Lapwing, cutter, in 1819 when she is described as boasting 12 guns - Saunder's Newsletter, 20.03.1819) Lapwing, brig sloop, 10 guns, was launched in February 1825 at Chatham, and was ordered back to Chatham in January 1827 to be prepared as a packet (Hampshire Chronicle, 28.02.1825, and Eastern Gazette, 09.01.1827). So, from 1825 the movements of a cutter and a brig sloop/packet bearing the same name are reported regularly in shipping news, one around the coast chasing smugglers, one carrying mail from the Americas. In 1845 the packet was deployed as a store and breakwater at Plymouth and in 1850 the cutter sailed for Australia. I am inclined, on balance, to read the dating of the Lapwing plan as the date of the drawing and not the launch date. As we have seen, Lapwing was out of the water for a period in 1817 and available to be surveyed. It is interesting to note that Kite and Fanny are also dated 1817 on the plan yet their launch date was May 1818 (Trewmaker's Exeter Flying Post, 14 May 1818). Thanks for your interest in this.

Thank you for such a prompt and helpful reply, druxey. Having so many Lapwings operating in British waters at the same time only adds to the confusion. There was, for example, a merchant Lapwing. Then HMS Lapwing, packet, which was carrying mail from the Americas to Falmouth in the early 1830s at the same time as HMS Lapwing, cutter, was prowling the waters off Grimsby in search of smugglers. A trawl of contemporary newspapers shows that notices relating to the movement of Lapwing, cutter, only begin to appear from 1808 - which supports the David Lyon launch date. Thank you for the Lyon source which, I now see, was probably the origin of the Australian reference. Apologies to modellers for invading your thread.

Hi, I am researching the career of an officer who commanded the Lapwing in the 1830s and found your posts very informative. Thank you so much for that. I see you date the launch of Lapwing to 1815 but Australian references to the cutter ascribe it to 1808 and its construction to a yard at Mevagissey in Cornwall. Sadly no source is provided. 1815 looks to me a more likely date given the other cutters in the class follow immediately afterwards so I was wondering if you could tell me what biographical source you might have used. I am particularly interested in date and place of launch, number of crew and guns borne. Regards, Joseph Byrne