HMS Nassau (1866)

HMS Nassau was a Cormorant-class wooden-hulled gun vessel of the Royal Navy.

Powered by screw propulsion with a displacement of 877 tons, she was launched at Pembroke Dockyard on 20 February 1866[2] and completed into a survey ship that July.

[1] Her first commander was Captain Charles Richard Mayne and her first mission to re-survey the passage north into the Pacific and the Straits of Magellan in South America,[1] as recorded in her log kept at The National Archives.

[citation needed] She then moved on to surveying on the China Station under Commander William Chimmo (1870–1873), mostly carrying out sub-surface temperature measurements and deep-sea soundings,[2] though also sending men ashore in boats to destroy a pirate stronghold in the Sulu Archipelago in 1872.

Next she moved to the East Indies Station under Lieutenant Francis John Gray (1873–1875)[1] surveying East Africa[2] and joined with HMS London's boats and fellow gun vessel HMS Rifleman in 1875 to bombard Mombasa.