HMS Saldanha (1809)

1803 plan of the Apollo class
History
United Kingdom
Name	Saldanha
Namesake	Capitulation of Saldanha Bay
Ordered	1 October 1806
Builder	Temple shipbuilders, South Shields
Laid down	March 1807
Launched	8 December 1809
Completed	6 July 1810
Commissioned	April 1810
Fate	Wrecked 4 December 1811
General characteristics [1]
Class and type	Apollo-class fifth-rate frigate
Tons burthen	951 29⁄94 (bm)
Length	144 ft 8 in (44.1 m) (overall) 121 ft 4+5⁄8 in (37.0 m) (keel)
Beam	38 ft 4+3⁄4 in (11.7 m)
Depth of hold	13 ft 2+1⁄2 in (4.0 m)
Propulsion	Sails
Complement	264
Armament	UD: 26 × 18-pounder guns QD: 2 × 9-pounder guns + 10 × 32-pounder carronades Fc: 2 × 9-pounder guns + 4 × 32-pounder carronades

HMS Saldanha was a 36-gun fifth-rate Apollo-class frigate of the Royal Navy. She was commissioned in April 1810 and spent her entire career serving on the Irish Station, including capturing a fast-sailing French privateer on 11 October 1811. In the evening of 4 December that year Saldanha was serving off Lough Swilly when she was caught in a storm. Last seen sailing off Fanad Head, the ship was wrecked in a nearby bay with every person on board being killed and the only survivors being a parrot and a dog. The wreck was memorialised by Thomas Sheridan in his poem The Loss of the Saldanha.