HMS Thistle

Six ships of the Royal Navy have borne the name HMS Thistle, after the thistle, the national flower of Scotland:

• HMS Thistle was a 10-gun schooner launched in 1808 and wrecked on 6 March 1811 on Maransquam Beach, 30 miles south of Sandy Hook, due to an inaccurate chart. Her crew was saved, except for four small boys.^[1]
• HMS Thistle was a 12-gun brig launched in 1812 and broken up in 1823.
• HMS Thistle was a Dapper-class wood screw gunboat launched in 1855 and broken up in 1863.
• HMS Thistle was a composite screw gunvessel launched in 1868 and sold in 1888.
• HMS Thistle was a Bramble-class gunboat launched in 1899 and sold in 1926.
• HMS Thistle was a T-class submarine launched in 1939 and sunk in 1940.

Royal Scots Navy

There was also an earlier HMS Thistle which served in the old Royal Scots Navy during the Anglo-Spanish War (1625–30) and Anglo-French War (1627–29).

In fiction

• HMS Thistle is a fictional corvette in Douglas Reeman's book To Risks Unknown, set in 1943

References

1. Gossett (1986), p.78.

• Colledge, J. J.; Warlow, Ben (2006) [1969]. Ships of the Royal Navy: The Complete Record of all Fighting Ships of the Royal Navy (Rev. ed.). London: Chatham Publishing. ISBN 978-1-86176-281-8. OCLC 67375475.
• Gossett, William Patrick (1986). The lost ships of the Royal Navy, 1793-1900. Mansell. ISBN 0-7201-1816-6.