High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! HMS Pelorus was a 385-ton, 18-gun Cruizer-class brig-sloop of the Royal Navy. She was built in Itchenor, England and launched on 25 June 1808. She saw action in the Napoleonic Wars and in the War of 1812. On anti-slavery patrol off West Africa, she captured four slavers and freed some 1350 slaves. She charted parts of Australia and New Zealand and participated in the first Opium War before becoming a merchantman and wrecking in 1844 while transporting opium to China.