HMS Carcass: bomb vessel, Arctic expedition, and Nelson

Carcass began as a bomb vessel, a specialised wooden sailing-warship form not represented by any surviving ship discussed here. On an Arctic expedition she carried the midshipman Horatio Nelson, whose encounter with a polar bear shows how contingent later naval history could be. That near miss raises the question of whether one of the Collingwoods might instead have commanded at Trafalgar and how the Caribbean anti-piracy careers of Nelson and the two Collingwoods could have diverged. The vessel was small enough for a regional harbour yet carried substantial design, exploration, and Nelson-era history.