HMS Exmouth was a 91-gun screw-propelled second-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy.
HMS Exmouth was ordered on 12 March 1840 as a 90-gun sailing ship from Devonport Dockyard, where her keel was laid on 13 September 1841. After over a decade on the stocks, on 30 October 1852 she was ordered to be completed as a 91-gun two-decker with steam screw propulsion, and conversion began on 20 June 1853.
On 12 July 1854 Exmouth was launched by the daughter of Admiral Stopford, Admiral-superintendent of the dockyard, in the presence of a crowd estimated at 2âÂÂ3,000. She was fitted out at Devonport Dockyard, and finally commissioned for service on 15 March 1855, having cost a total of ã146,067, with ã76,379 being spent on the hull as a sailing ship, and a further ã24,620 spent on the machinery.
In 1855, during the later stages of the Crimean War, she served in the Baltic Sea as flagship of Sir Michael Seymour. On 12 May 1857, Exmouth ran aground in Crewgreace bay, west of The Lizard, Cornwall. She was refloated. Her captain, Harry Ayres was convicted of negligence by a Court Martial and was admonished. Her master, Edward Fancourt Cavell was also convicted. He was sentenced to be reprimanded and admonished. She was a guard ship at Devonport by 1859, when future admiral Robert Spencer Robinson was her captain between 1 February 1858 and May 1859.
From 1877, the Admiralty lent Exmouth to the Metropolitan Asylums Board as a training ship, based at Grays, Essex, replacing the similar Goliath, which had been destroyed by fire in December 1875. These ships were recommended for boys supervised by the poor law authorities as an economic means of providing them with a career which also benefited the country.
Exmouth was sold by the Admiralty to George Cohen on 4 April 1905 and then broken up at Penarth, South Wales.