HMS "Amelia" Chasing the French Frigate "Aréthuse" 1813. Painted in 1852 by John Christian Schetky, representing Proserpine (1785) after her capture by the Royal Navy
Portrait of Proserpine (1809) by Antoine Roux, after her capture in the action of 27 February 1809 (the mizzen-mast was actually cut away three metres above the deck)
Notes and references
Notes
Related Research Articles
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Proserpine was a 38-gun Hébé-class frigate of the French Navy launched in 1785 that HMS Dryad captured on 13 June 1796. The Admiralty commissioned Proserpine into the Royal Navy as the fifth rate, HMS Amelia. She spent 20 years in the Royal Navy, participating in numerous actions in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, capturing a number of prizes, and serving on anti-smuggling and anti-slavery patrols. Her most notable action was her intense and bloody, but inconclusive, fight in 1813 with the French frigate Aréthuse. Amelia was broken up in December 1816.
HMS Dryad was a fifth-rate sailing frigate of the Royal Navy that served for 64 years, at first during the Napoleonic Wars and then in the suppression of slavery. She fought in a notable single-ship action in 1805 when she captured the French frigate Proserpine, an action that would later earn her crew the Naval General Service Medal. Dryad was broken up at Portsmouth in 1860.
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HMS Proserpine was a 44-gun Amphion-class frigate of the Royal Navy. The French Navy captured her off Toulon about a year after her commissioning and took her into service as Proserpine. She served in various capacities such as a frigate, troopship, hospital ship, and prison hulk until 1865.
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References
Bibliography
- Roche, Jean-Michel (2005). Dictionnaire des bâtiments de la flotte de guerre française de Colbert à nos jours. 1. Group Retozel-Maury Millau. p. 364. ISBN 978-2-9525917-0-6. OCLC 165892922.
This article includes a list of ships with the same or similar names. If an internal link for a specific ship led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended ship article, if one exists.