HMS Vengeance was an 84-gun second rate ship of the line

Ship of the line

A ship of the line was a type of naval warship constructed from the 17th through the mid-19th century to take part in the naval tactic known as the line of battle, in which two columns of opposing warships would manoeuvre to bring the greatest weight of broadside guns to bear...

 of the Royal Navy

Royal Navy

The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...

, launched on 27 July 1824 at Pembroke Dockyard.. The Canopus class

Canopus class ship of the line

The Canopus-class ships of the line were a class of nine 84-gun two-deck second rates of the Royal Navy. Their design was based on an enlarged version of the lines of the captured French ship Franklin, since commissioned in the Royal Navy as HMS Canopus, although this ship herself was not included...

 ships were all modelled on a captured French ship, the Franklin which was renamed Canopus

HMS Canopus (1798)

HMS Canopus was an 80-gun third rate ship of the line of the British Royal Navy. She had previously served with the French Navy as the Tonnant-class Franklin, but was captured after less than a year in service by the British fleet under Rear Admiral Horatio Nelson at the Battle of the Nile in 1798...

. Some of the copies were faster than others, though it was reported that none could beat the original.

In August 1851 Vengeance commanded by Captain Lord Edward Russell left Portsmouth for the Mediterranean. After stops at Lisbon and Gibraltar, she arrived at Malta on 2 October. The ship was nicknamed 'the wind's-eye liner', and was faster than all the other ships except Phaeton. Ships commander during 1851 and 1852 was William R. Mends (later Admiral). Vengeance returned to England at Christmas 1852, before returning to the Mediterranean with a new second in command, commander George Le Gyt Bowyear, in the spring. By June she had rejoined the fleet at Malta, and then accompanied the whole Mediterranean fleet under vice-admiral James Dundas

James Whitley Deans Dundas

Admiral Sir James Whitley Deans Dundas GCB was a Royal Navy officer and a First Sea Lord.-Naval career:...

 to Bashika Bay outside the Dardanelles

Dardanelles

The Dardanelles , formerly known as the Hellespont, is a narrow strait in northwestern Turkey connecting the Aegean Sea to the Sea of Marmara. It is one of the Turkish Straits, along with its counterpart the Bosphorus. It is located at approximately...

 as political tension increased before the Crimean War

Crimean War

The Crimean War was a conflict fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the French Empire, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Sardinia. The war was part of a long-running contest between the major European powers for influence over territories of the declining...

. In October the fleet moved through the Dardanelles to the Bosphorus and moored at Beikos Bay. In January she visited Sinope, where a Turkish squadron had been sunk by the Russian fleet In November (Battle of Sinop

Battle of Sinop

The Battle of Sinop, or the Battle of Sinope, took place on 30 November 1853 at Sinop, a sea port in northern Anatolia, when Imperial Russian warships struck and annihilated a patrol force of Ottoman ships anchored in the harbor...

), before moving to Varna

Varna

Varna is the largest city and seaside resort on the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast and third-largest in Bulgaria after Sofia and Plovdiv, with a population of 334,870 inhabitants according to Census 2011...

 in March, and then took part in the bombardment of Odessa

Odessa

Odessa or Odesa is the administrative center of the Odessa Oblast located in southern Ukraine. The city is a major seaport located on the northwest shore of the Black Sea and the fourth largest city in Ukraine with a population of 1,029,000 .The predecessor of Odessa, a small Tatar settlement,...

on 22 April. The ship assisted with the transportation of the army across the Black sea to the Crimea before attending at the Battle of Alma on September 20.

She became a receiving ship in 1861, and was eventually sold out of the navy in 1897.