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INTRODUCTION

The Royal Navy service of
Francis William Boon

In the 1861 Census (7 April 1861) Francis William Boon, aged 16 years 7 months,
was a Boy 2nd Class on board HMS Miranda.

HMS Miranda was launched in 1851 as a wooden sloop with a displacement of 1523 tons, having been converted to screw whilst being built. A sloop was normally only lightly armed, in this case 14 guns, and was used for dispatches or passengers. She is recorded as being on the Australia Station in 1860 and in 1862 as having coaled at Illawara, south of Sydney, with coal from the Bellambi Colliery. Her Captain in 1861 was Henry Carr Glyn. She was converted to a corvette in 1862.

HMS Miranda appears to have spent almost 5 years on the Australia Station, being commissioned for the Station on 6 October 1860 and paying off back in England on 3 June 1865.

Whilst on the Station Miranda was involved in the Maori Wars, in New Zealand, in April 1864. Men from Miranda attacked the Gate Pah fortifications, now Tauranga, on the Bay of Plenty. A memorial at the Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich, commemorates those who fell in action in New Zealand in 1863-4, including Private Levi Kent and Gunner George Watts of HMS Miranda.

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