When is a Foxhound a Beagle?

It’s not a trick question, though we may have finessed the wording a bit. A Foxhound can be a Beagle when it is an early G class destroyer in the British Royal Navy.

Between 1908 and 1909, sixteen destroyers were ordered by the Royal Navy, and before that class was redesigned the “G class” in 1913, it was known as the Beagle class. The Beagles, all fueled by coal, served during World War I, particularly during the Dardanelles Campaign of 1915. The HMS Foxhound was one of three Beagle-class destroyers ordered in the 1908 program, but in all, sixteen ships ordered from nine builders were constructed.

These were not the only nautical vessels to launch under the name “Foxhound.” There was an 18-gun Cruizer class brig-sloop that launched in 1806 (only to founder in the Atlantic three years later). The HMS Foxhound was a screw gunboat launched in 1856, but broken up ten years later. And then there was the HMS Foxhound, a 4-gun screw gunboat that not only fared better, but had an impressive length of service: Launched in 1877, this Foxhound became a coal yug (not tug, but yug) after she was transferred to the Coastguard in 1886. She was renamed “C 20″ in 1897, then was sold in 1920. Nearly one hundred years after she was put to sea, she was finally broken up in 1975.

There were sloops, brig sloops, and F class destroyers, all named Foxhound.

In the USA, the U.S. Special Operations Command anointed a specially configured twin-turboprop Dash 8 SOCOM Tactical Airborne Multi-Sensor Platform (we looked it up) with the name, Foxhound.

Clearly, “Foxhound” is a name that gets around aircraft and nautical vessels.

Readers interested in learning more about ships named for a dog may find the following post interesting:

The HMS Beagle

Images: Foxhound at the left by © Sgbrown56/Dreamtime stock photo; Beagle at the right by © Sigurdur Brynjarsson/ Dreamstime.com