The despatch vessel H.M.S. Helicon in the Bay of Naples

H.M.S. Helicon was a wooden paddle-wheeled despatch vessel built at Portsmouth and launched on 31 January 1865. Displacing 1,000 tons (837 tons bm.), she measured 220 feet in length with a 28 foot beam and was fitted with 1,610 hp. engines to give her a cruising speed of 14½ knots. After over twenty years service with the fleet, she was renamed Enchantress on 1 April 1888, thereafter being used as the official yacht of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty. Judged obsolete soon after the turn of the century, she was sold to Laidler of Sunderland in July 1905 for £2,675.