HMS Wolverine

HMS Wolverine (or Wolverene, or Woolverene), was a Royal Navy 14-gun brig-sloop, formerly the civilian collier Rattler that the Admiralty purchased in 1798 and converted into a brig sloop, but armed experimentally. She served during the French Revolutionary Wars and participated in one action that won for her crew a clasp to the Naval General Service Medal. A French privateer captured and sank Wolverine on 21 March 1804 whilst she was on convoy duty. Armament Unusually for a brig-sloop, she was virtually a two-deck vessel as the waist between forecastle and quarterdeck was filled in to form a continuous flush deck. The upper deck below this flush deck carried six 24-pounder carronades and two 18-pounder long guns, all mounted on centreline pivots. The gun crews could fire their weapons to either side of the vessel by rotating the carriages along grooves set into the deck firing through the eight gunports on either side to accommodate these guns. On the flush deck above she additionally carried six 12-pounder carronades (two forwards and four on the quarterdeck). The crews could also shift the carronades on her upper deck from side to side as required. Captain John Schank, who was responsible for several other nautical innovations, devised this method of arming Wolverine.