Flying Fish HMS

[john sefton]

A century ago, the government and scientific elite of Hong Kong welcomed an unusual visitor: an Australian Catholic priest and scientist, Julian Edmund Tenison Woods, who passed through Hong Kong as part of an extensive scientific tour of southeast and east Asia. Woods is probably best known outside church circles for his scientific work, and despite limited formal training, he became an active scientist, publishing extensively in natural sciences, especially marine biology, botany, geology and paleantology.
Woods then joined HMS Flying Fish on a voyage to the Philippine Islands. On 20 March 1885, we find him writing from Manila to his brother, Terry. But the exigiencies of war in the region meant that the Flying Fish had to return to Hong Kong, and so also Woods.
His work in Singapore concluded, Woods returned on the Flying Fish to Japan in September 1885 for a second, longer visit. (There is no mention of his passing through Hong Kong on the way.) Woods' stay in Japan was extended by epidemics and the resulting quarantine, and it was February 1886 before he could leave Japan and proceed to Hong Kong.
There are no available details of his last stay. He rejoined the Flying Fish, which left Hong Kong on 19 March 1886, and travelled on her, via Manila and the Celebes, reaching Port Darwin in Australia on 23 June 1886. Immediately he resumed his Australian researches.
In 1886 Captain Maclear of H.M.S. "Flying Fish," having discovered an anchorage in a bay which he named Flying Fish Cove, landed a party and made a small but interesting collection of the flora and fauna. In the following year Captain Aldrich on H.M.S. "Egeria" visited it, accompanied by Mr J. J. Lister, F.R.S., who formed a larger biological and mineralogical collection.
Various web sites.
Christmas Is SG227, 42

[aukepalmhof]

Built as a composite screw sloop by the Chatham Dockyard, Chatham for the Royal Navy.
1872 Keel laid down, intended name DARING.
14 January 1873 renamed in FLYING FISH.
27 November 1873 launched as HMS FLYING FISH, one of the Fantome class, 5 sisters.
Displacement 949 tons, dim. 160.0 x 31.4 x 12.6ft, length of keel 139.3ft.
Powered by a 2-cyl. horizontal steam engine manufactured by Humprys Tennant & Co, 836 ihp., one shaft, hoisting screw, speed 11 knots.
Bunker capacity 100 tons, range 1.000 miles by a speed of 10 knots.
Armament: 2 – 7 inch MLR, 2 – 64 pdrs. MLR all mounted on pivots.
Barque rigged. Iron framed, planked with teak.
Crew 125.
18 June 1874 commissioned at Chatham, building cost £39.445.

1874 She sailed for a four-and-a-half year commission on the East Indies Station, and engaged in suppression of slave trade on the east coast of Africa.
1878 Paid off and refitted in a survey vessel in Sheerness, April 1880 conversion completed where after she sailed for the Far East.
For a brief period in 1885 when following a war scare with Russia, she mounted her full armament and assumed general fleet duties.
Having resumed her surveying roll she came more to the southern waters around Australia, charting the northern waters there till she was released by HMS EGERIA end 1886.
One her homeward voyage under command of Capt. J.F.L.P. MacLear she visited in January 1887 Christmas Islands, after she circumnavigated the at that time uninhabited island she found a landing place in what was later named the Flying Fish cove, and the capital was founded.
A landing party collected plants and flowers and took some rock samples; one of these samples was found contained phosphate.
After arrival in the U.K. paid off.
December 1888 sold.

Source: Ships on the Australian Station by John Bastock. The Sail&Steam Navy List by David Lyon and Rif Winfield. Log Book.