HMS Challenger was a steam-assisted Royal Navy Pearl-class corvette launched on 13 February 1858 at the Woolwich Dockyard. She was the flagship of the Australia Station between 1866 and 1870.
As part of the North America and West Indies Station she took part in 1862 in operations against Mexico, including the occupation of Vera Cruz. Assigned as the flagship of Australia Station in 1866 and in 1868 undertook a punitive operation against some Fijian natives to avenge the murder of a missionary and some of his dependents. She left the Australian Station in late 1870.
She was picked to undertake the first global marine research expedition: the Challenger expedition. The Challenger carried a complement of 243 officers, scientists and crew when she embarked on her 68,890-nautical-mile (127,580 km) journey.
The United States Space Shuttle Challenger was named after the ship. Her figurehead is on display in the foyer of the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton.
1873–1876: Grand tour
Eight ships of the Royal Navy have been named HMS Challenger, most famously the survey vessel Challenger that carried the Challenger expedition from 1872 to 1876.
HMS Challenger was a survey ship of the United Kingdom's Royal Navy. She was laid down in 1930 at Chatham Dockyard and built in a dry dock. Afterwards she was moved to Portsmouth for completion and commissioned on 15 March 1932.
Service history
Until the outbreak of the Second World War, Challenger surveyed the waters around the United Kingdom, Labrador, the West Indies, and the East Indies.
From 1939 to 1942 she served in home waters and as a convoy escort. In June and July 1941 she and three Flower-class corvettes escorted the troop ship Anselm from Britain en route for Freetown, Sierra Leone. When the troop ship was torpedoed north of the Azores, Challenger and the corvette HMS Starwort rescued hundreds of survivors and then transferred them to the armed merchant cruiser HMS Cathay.
From 1942 to 1946 Challenger surveyed in the Indian Ocean and the Western Pacific. She returned to Chatham in 1946 for a refit before returning to the Persian Gulf late 1946. She left the Gulf in 1947 and went to Cyprus where a shore party logged tides. She then proceeded to Gibraltar for another refit in dry dock.
In 1979 a paper describing the design for HMS Challenger was presented at an Institute of marine Engineering Conference. ( Dynamic Positioning Conference )At that time several Diver Support Vessels were operating successfully in the North Sea but the Navy chose to build their own vessel in a navy style rather than learn from or make use of the experienced commercial operators. HMS Challenger was a unique vessel in Royal Navy service, purpose built to support deep sea operations and saturation diving. Built by Scotts at Greenock, the ship was launched on 19 May 1981, but not commissioned until 1984, during a time when the Royal Navy was cutting back on expenditure. The consequence was that the £80m Challenger was seen as an extravagance that the Admiralty could not afford. As a consequence, after only a few years service, in 1990 the ship was laid up and offered for sale. The total cost for the construction of the ship was also increased by various errors and delays during construction.