Introduction

 

 There is very little recorded about either of the two ships bearing the name HMS St Christopher and so what follows is inevitably a compilation of a variety of sources.  However, the impact that the second HMS St Christopher, a coastal forces training base, had and indeed still has on Fort William cannot be ignored. It is therefore with this in mind that this information has been collated.  This short article summarises what I have so far been able to find out about HMS ST CHRISTOPHER, there is undoubtedly much more that is yet to be revealed.  If you can provide any further information or can suggest where I might look, I would be delighted if you would contact me at the address given below.

 

Piratical beginnings in the Caribbean!!

 

Very little is known of the first HMS St. Christopher, but it seems that she was originally the French sloop Mohawk, an 18 gun French privateer which was given to the Royal Navy by the people of the Island of St Christopher (St Kitts) in the West Indies in about 1807.  Perhaps, somewhat less than coincidentally, the neighbouring island is called Nevis!  Whether this had a bearing on the Admiralty giving the WWII training base the name ST CHRISTOPHER is, at this stage only conjecture!

The only record of the first HMS ST CHRISTOPHER’s activities that I have been able to find was that she went to the aid of the shipwrecked  crew of HMS Astrea on the southern end of the Caribbean island of Anegada  in the Virgin Islands on 25 May 1808.  Her name disappears from the Navy List in 1810.