Quote
TO MERCHANTS, BUILDERS, & OTHERS.
TO be SOLD by AUCTION, by Mr. WINDSOR, on Wednesday next, October the 7th, 1835, precisely at eleven o’clock, in a Field at the back of the Coach and Horses, Hilsea, in the island of Portsea,—About 100 Lots of Good OAK & FIR BEAMS, oak, Fir, and Elm Plank, Floor and other Timber, Firewood, &c. having been broken up from H.M. late brig Hardy, built in the year 1808.
The whole will be Sold without reserve, and is well worthy the attention of Builders and Others.—Catalogues to be had at the Coach and Horses, Hilsea.
— Hampshire Telegraph, Monday 05 October 1835 source
Hardy (1804) (1, 2, plans) was a 12-gun Brig built at Wearmouth in Durham, and was sold by Dutch auction for £105 on 6th August 1835 to John Levy of Rochester. If she ended her life as a prison hulk at Tipner, it appears that John Levy broke her up on-site over the course of the next two months, and the timber was dragged just a few hundred yards to be sold.
Whenever I see auctions like this, I wonder how many houses dotted around Portsea Island were built with timbers from a prison hulk or a surplus privateer.
Question
Are the selling of the Hardy in 1835 and the ground clearance and letting of the land in 1834 part of a wider pattern? A tidying-up of the whole district? Or was the Hardy just a hulk that had come to the end of its life?