HMS Comet, a wood-hulled paddle tug completed in 1822, was the first steam ship built for the Royal Navy.[3]
Comet was built by Boulton, Watt & Co at the yards in Deptford, just outside London.[3][2] She was ordered as a tug, for towing ships out of harbour when the wind was not enough to allow them to move by themselves, specifically "to be employed in towing HM ships in the Thames and Medway".[3] The ship was designed by Oliver Lang, the master shipwright at Woolwich Dockyard. She was fitted with a two-mast schooner rig, as well as a twin cylinder side-lever engine, which produced 80 nominal horsepower.[3]
Humphry Davy travelled to Norway on the Comet in the summer of 1824 to test his zinc protectors for ships' copper bottoms.[4]
^Letter from Davy to the Navy Board, 29 June 1824, National Archives, ADM106/1504, f.126
^"Portsmouth, Portsea and Gosport". Hampshire Chronicle. Vol. XCVI, no. 5230. Southampton: The British Newspaper Archive (subscription required). 12 December 1868. p. 5. Retrieved 27 March 2019.
