Retirement
Temeraire arrived in Plymouth on 9 February 1812 and was docked for a survey several weeks later. The survey reported that she was "A well built and strong ship but apparently much decay'd". Spear was superseded on 4 March by Captain Samuel Hood Linzee, but Linzee's command was short-lived. Temeraire left the dock on 13 March and was paid off one week later. Advances in naval technology had developed more powerful and strongly built warships, and though still comparatively new, Temeraire was no longer considered desirable for front-line service. While laid up the decision was taken to convert her into a prison ship to alleviate overcrowding caused by large influxes of French prisoners from the Peninsular War campaigns. Conversion work was carried out at Plymouth between November and December 1813, after which she was laid up in the River Tamar as a prison hulk. From 1814 she was under the nominal command of Lieutenant John Wharton. Despite being laid up and disarmed Temeraire and the rest of her class were nominally re-rated as 104-gun first rates in February 1817.
Temeraire's service as a prison ship lasted until 1819, at which point she was selected for conversion to a receiving ship. She was extensively refitted at Plymouth between September 1819 and June 1820 at a cost of £27,733, and then sailed to Sheerness Dockyard. As a receiving ship she served as a temporary berth for new naval recruits until they received a posting to a ship. She fulfilled this role for eight years, until becoming a victualling depot in 1829. Her final role was as a guard ship at Sheerness, under the title "Guardship of the Ordinary and Captain-Superintendent's ship of the Fleet Reserve in the Medway". This final post as flagship of the Medway Reserve involved her being repainted and rearmed, and she was used to train boys belonging to The Marine Society. For the last two years of her service, from 1836 to 1838 she was under the nominal command of Captain Thomas Fortescue Kennedy, in his post as Captain-Superintendent of Sheerness. Kennedy had been Temeraire's first-lieutenant at Trafalgar.
Read more about this topic: HMS Temeraire (1798)
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