HMS Lightning (1823)

HMS Lightning, launched in 1823, was a paddle steamer, one of the first steam-powered ships on the British Royal Navy List.

[2]: 221  In 1836 she took part in trials conducted by Professor Barlow in the Thames Estuary to measure speed and coal consumption at different steam pressures.

[3] From 1854-1855, during the Crimean War, Lightning under the command of Bartholomew Sulivan, was engaged in reconnaissance and survey work in the Baltic.

[1] She was then made available to Charles Wyville Thomson and William Benjamin Carpenter for a deep-water dredging survey in the north Atlantic in 1868.

Thomson and Carpenter had received support from the Royal Society for deep-sea explorations to test the idea of Edward Forbes that there was no life—an azoic zone—in the oceans below a few hundred fathoms.