HMS Active was a Royal Navyfifth-ratefrigate launched on 14 December 1799 at Chatham Dockyard. Sir John Henslow designed her as an improvement on the Artois-class frigates. She served during the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars, capturing numerous enemy vessels. Her crews participated in one campaign and three actions that would later qualify them for the Naval General Service Medal. She returned to service after the wars and finally was broken up in 1860.
Active was commissioned under Captain Charles Davers in December 1799 and convoyedEast Indiamen in 1800.[5] She sailed from Portsmouth on 28 June 1800, escorting a convoy of eight vessels, at least six of which, such as Herculean, were East Indiamen.[6]
Then she began operating in the English Channel as part of the Channel Fleet. She later sailed with a convoy for the Mediterranean. In September 1800 she was under the temporary command of Captain John Giffard.[5] On 2 October Active and Castor recaptured the brig Stout.[7]
On 26 January 1801 Active captured the privateerQuinola after a two-hour chase. She was armed with 14 guns, 6 and 2-pounders, and carried a crew of 48 men. She had sailed from Morlaix the morning before and had not made any captures.[8]
Giffard then removed to the third rateMagnificent on 23 February. Active served in the navy's Egyptian campaign between 8 March 1801 and 2 September, which qualified her officers and crew for the clasp "Egypt" to the Naval General Service Medal that the Admiralty issued in 1847 to all surviving claimants.[a]
From October Active came under Commander Thomas Shortland, also temporary.[5] On 25 October she captured the Genoese pinco St Anna.[10]
In 1802 Active sailed to Egypt with specie. On 7 March she arrived in Lisbon from Gibraltar, together with Constance. While the captains were ashore the police of the Guard threw the crews of their barges into subterranean holding cells. When the captains went to the office of the Captain of the Regiment of Lisbon, he had the two captains detained as well. Although the British consul and others remonstrated, the captains were held overnight before being released. The underlying issue may have been a violation of quarantine rules that applied to all vessels coming from the Mediterranean.[11]
A letter from Gibraltar dated 24 June reported that Triumph and "a frigate" had sailed to Algiers to secure from the Dey the release of British seamen from three vessels that the Algerines had seized and sold the vessels and cargoes on the grounds that the vessels had sailed the Mediterranean with false passes, or old ones issued to other vessels.[12] The frigate that accompanied Triumph was Active.
On 19 September a lightning storm occurred at Gibraltar. Ships that sustained strikes, in some cases that caused damage or casualties, included Active, Dragon, Goliath, and Superb. A strike destroyed several feet of the topgallant mast on Active and killed the ship's butcher, who had been standing near the main mast with a cleaver in his hand.[13]
Napoleonic Wars
Active at the attack on Boulogne October 1804
In August 1804, Active was under the command of Captain Richard Mowbray, for the blockade of Toulon, in the Mediterranean.[5] (Captain Davers had resigned his command due to ill-health caused by yellow fever, which he had caught on the Leeward Islands station. He died in 1805.) On 27 April Active captured the French letter of marque schooner Les Amis. Les Amis was armed with four 6-pounder guns, had a crew of 20 men, and was carrying a cargo of wine and merchandise from Bordeaux to her home port of Cayenne.[14]
At some point Active captured the Prussian vessels Ida Margaretta, Anna Dorothea, and Norberg.[15] On 12 March 1807, Active and Endymion captured the Danish vessel Henrie and Maria. The prize money was remitted from Malta.[16]
In 1807, Active returned to the Mediterranean. An initial assignment was her participation in Thomas Louis's squadron in Admiral Duckworth'sDardanelles Operation.[17] On the way in on 19 February Active drove a frigate aground and then burnt her, all without suffering any casualties. However, Active had eight men wounded on 3 March during the withdrawal from the Dardanelles, one of whom, the boatswain, later died.[17] During the withdrawal she suffered a hit from an 800-pound stone cannonball, 6'6" in diameter, which did damage but caused no casualties.[18]
Almost a year later, on 26 March 1808, she and the 64-gun Standard captured the Franco-Italian brig Friedland off Cape Blanco.[19] Mowbray took possession of Friedland after a chase of several hours. The brig might have escaped had she not lost her topmast. She was one year old and was armed with 16 French 12-pounder guns. Active took her prize to Malta, together with the prisoners, who included Commodore Don Amilcar Paolucci, commander in chief of the Italian Marine, and Knight of the Iron Crown.[19] The Royal Navy took Friedland into service as HMS Delight.
In 1809 Active returned to Britain and was paid off. She was recommissioned in June 1809 under Captain James Alexander Gordon, who sailed for the Adriatic on 4 October.[20]
In 1810 she participated in a raid on Grao, near Trieste. Together with Cerberus and Amphion she seized a coastal convoy of trabaccolos and other vessels. Active did not report casualties.[21] In 1847 the Admiralty issued the Naval General Service Medal with clasp "28 June Boat Service 1810" to all surviving claimants from the action.
On 14 June Cerberus, in company with Active and Swallow, captured three gunboats - the Vincentina, Modanese and Elvetica (or Elvetria).[22]
On 4 February 1811 Active and Cerbrus sent in their boats to raid Pescara. The British destroyed one trabaccalo, after first transferring its cargo to Active, and sent another three to Lissa. All four were from Ancona. Active lost one man wounded.[23]
Five days later the boats from Active and Cerbrus raided Ortona.[23] Despite facing heavy fire, the British suffered only four men wounded. They captured one trabaccolo and ten Venetian transports that were carrying supplies from Ancona to the French at Corfu. The British sent all the vessels they captured to Lissa, or destroyed them.[23] The vessels were:
Eugenie, of six guns, commanded by a lieutenant;
Transport Fortunée, No. 52, laden with Corn, burnt after her cargo was transferred to another vessel;
Transport, name unknown, laden with oil;
Transport, name unknown, No. 2, laden with plank and corn;
Transport St. Anongiato, laden with hemp and cordage;
Transport, name unknown, No. 50, laden with wheat;
Transport, name unknown, No. 55, partly laden with sundries;
Transport Anime del Purgatorio, laden with rice, cargo taken on board and vessel burnt;
Transport, name, unknown, laden with wheat.
Two transports, names unknown, burnt in the port.
In addition, the British were able to burn two warehouses holding oil, soldiers' clothing, ammunition, and naval stores, including cables, blocks, hawsers, hemp, and the like.[23]
HMS Amphion, Cerberus, Volage, and Active attacking the United French and Italian Squadrons at the Battle of Lissa in the Adriatic, on 13 March 1811
On 14 March Active participated in the Battle of Lissa, where she lost nine men killed and 26 wounded, but together with Cerberus captured the French frigate Corona.[24]Active, Amphion, Cerberus, and Volage encountered a French force consisting of five frigates, one corvette, one brig, two schooners, one gun boat, and one xebec, all under M. Dubourdieu, Captain de Vaisseux.[24] The French force had double the guns and triple the number of men relative to the British force. The British also captured the frigate Bellona and caused the frigate Favorite to run ashore where she blew up.[24]Flora (or Flore) also surrendered but then sailed off again while Amphion, to which she had struck, was capturing Bellona. Captain William Hoste wrote a letter to the captain of Flora arguing that he was honor bound to give up his vessel to Amphion.[24] The acting captain of Flora replied that she had not struck but rather that a shot had carried away her flag and that therefore the French were not going to surrender her.[b]Active lost nine men killed and 26 wounded in the battle. In 1847 the Admiralty issued the Naval General Service Medal with clasp "Lissa" to all surviving claimants.
On 23 July Active, Alceste, and Acorn captured French property on Lissa.[26]
On 27 July Active's boats attacked a convoy in the port of Rogoznica on the Dalmatian coast that was carrying grain to the garrison at Ragusa.[27] A landing party captured a fort on a hill overlooking the port and the remaining boats then entered. There they found three gunboats and 28 transports.[27] The British brought out the three gunboats and 18 transports after burning 10 of the transports. Active suffered only four men wounded; the French appeared to have lost a number of men killed and wounded.[27]
Next, Active participated in the destruction of a French convoy at the action of 29 November 1811. In the engagement, the British captured the frigate Pomone and the storeship Persanne.[28] The action cost Active eight men dead and 27 wounded, with Captain Gordon hit by a cannonball that severed his knee,[29] leaving his leg hanging by a thread.[30] Amputation proved necessary but Captain Gordon, complete with a wooden leg, was still able to sail Seahorse within the year.[31]Active shared the prize money with Alceste, Unite, Kingfisher, and Acorn, which were either in sight, or sharing by agreement.[32][c] In 1847 the Admiralty issued the Naval General Service Medal with clasp "Pelagosa 29 Novr. 1811" to all surviving claimants from the action.[4]
In 1812 Active returned to Britain.
Post-war service
In 1815 Active came under Captain William King, and then in October Captain Philip Carteret.[5] She was fitted for sea from November 1815 to April 1816 and then was on the Jamaica station in 1817. In 1819 she was fitted with man-powered paddles, an experimental design by Lieutenant Burton.
In January 1819 she was recommissioned under Captain Sir James Gordon on the Halifax station. In December 1821 she was under Captain Richard King "on particular service". In September 1824 she was on the Lisbon station under Captain Robert Rodney.[5]
Fate
Embarkation of Artillery on board the Argo, at Balaclava, for England in 1856
Active was fitted as a receiving ship at Plymouth between October 1825 and February 1826. She was renamed Argo on 15 November 1833. Her breaking up was completed on 21 October 1860 at Plymouth.[5]
Notes
↑ A first-class share of the prize money awarded in April 1823 was worth £34 2s 4d; a fifth-class share, that of a seaman, was worth 3s 11½d. The amount was small as the total had to be shared between 79 vessels and the entire army contingent.[9]
↑ In November Flora was reported to have been lost while sailing from Trieste to Venice. A storm apparently caused her to run aground near Chiossa. All but a handful of the men aboard her drowned.[25]
↑ The prize money for Gordon for Persanne was £477 9s 10d; for an ordinary seaman it was £5 5s 4d.[33] For an ordinary seaman this represented about three-month's wages.
HMS Euryalus was a Royal Navy 36-gun Apollo-class frigate that saw service in the Battle of Trafalgar and the War of 1812. During her career she was commanded by three prominent naval personalities of the Napoleonic and post-Napoleonic period: Henry Blackwood, George Dundas and Charles Napier. After the end of the Napoleonic Wars she continued on active service for a number of years, before spending more than two decades as a prison hulk. She ended her career in Gibraltar where, in 1860, she was sold for breaking up.
HMS Arethusa was a 38-gun Minerva-class fifth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy built at Bristol in 1781. She served in three wars and made a number of notable captures before she was broken up in 1815.
HMS Apollo, the fifth ship of the Royal Navy to be named for the Greek god Apollo, was a fifth-rate frigate of the Lively class, carrying 38 guns, launched in 1805 and broken up in 1856.
Franchise was launched in 1798 as a 40-gun Coquille-class frigate of the French Navy. The British captured her in 1803 and took her into the Royal Navy under her existing name. In the war on commerce during the Napoleonic Wars she was more protector than prize-taker, capturing many small privateers but few commercial prizes. She was also at the battle of Copenhagen. She was broken up in 1815.
Pomone was a 40-gun frigate of the French Navy, launched in 1785. The British captured her off the Île de Batz in April 1794 and incorporated her into the Royal Navy. Pomone subsequently had a relatively brief but active career in the British Navy off the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts of France before suffering sufficient damage from hitting a rock. Due to this, the ship was taken out of service and then broken up in 1803.
The Adriatic campaign was a minor theatre of war during the Napoleonic Wars in which a succession of small British Royal Navy and Austrian Navy squadrons and independent cruisers harried the combined naval forces of the First French Empire, the Kingdom of Italy, the Illyrian Provinces and the Kingdom of Naples between 1807 and 1814 in the Adriatic Sea. Italy, Naples and Illyria were all controlled either directly or via proxy by the French Emperor Napoleon I, who had seized them at the Treaty of Pressburg in the aftermath of the War of the Third Coalition.
HMS Amphion was a 32-gun fifth rate frigate, the lead ship of her class, built for the Royal Navy during the 1790s. She served during the Napoleonic Wars.
HMS Cerberus was a 32-gun fifth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy. She served in the French Revolutionary and the Napoleonic Wars in the Channel, the Mediterranean, the Adriatic, and even briefly in the Baltic against the Russians. She participated in one boat action that won for her crew a clasp to the Naval General Service Medal (NGSM). She also captured many privateers and merchant vessels. Her biggest battle was the Battle of Lissa, which won for her crew another clasp to the NGSM. She was sold in 1814.
The Battle of Lissa, also known as the Battle of Vis, was a naval action fought between a British frigate squadron and a much larger squadron of French and Italian frigates and smaller vessels on Wednesday, 13 March on 1811 during the Adriatic campaign of the Napoleonic Wars. The engagement was fought in the Adriatic Sea for possession of the strategically important Croatian island of Vis, from which the British squadron had been disrupting French shipping in the Adriatic. The French needed to control the Adriatic to supply a growing army in the Illyrian Provinces, and consequently dispatched an invasion force in March 1811 consisting of six frigates, numerous smaller craft and a battalion of Italian soldiers.
The action of 29 November 1811 was a minor naval engagement fought between two frigate squadrons in the Adriatic Sea during the Adriatic campaign of the Napoleonic Wars. The action was one of a series of operations conducted by the British Royal Navy and the French Navy to contest dominance over the Adriatic between 1807 and 1814. During this period the Adriatic was surrounded by French territory or French client states and as a result British interference was highly disruptive to the movement of French troops and supplies.
HMS Kingfisher was a Royal Navy 18-gun ship sloop, built by John King and launched in 1804 at Dover. She served during the Napoleonic Wars, first in the Caribbean and then in the Mediterranean before being broken up in 1816.
HMS Havannah was a Royal Navy 36-gun fifth-rate frigate. She was launched in 1811 and was one of twenty-seven Apollo-class frigates. She was cut down to a 24-gun sixth rate in 1845, converted to a training ship in 1860, and sold for breaking up in 1905.
HMS Topaze was a Royal Navy 32-gun frigate, originally completed in 1791 as a French Magicienne-class frigate. In 1793 Lord Hood's fleet captured her at Toulon. The Royal Navy took her into service under her existing name. She was broken up in 1814.
HMS Sheldrake was a Royal Navy 16-gun Seagull-class brig-sloop. She was built in Hythe and launched in 1806. She fought in the Napoleonic Wars and at the Battle of Anholt during the Gunboat War. She was stationed in the mouth of the river Loire in 1814 after Napoleon's abdication to prevent his escape to America. She was sold in 1816.
HMS Argo was a 44-gun fifth-rate Roebuck-class ship of the Royal Navy. She was launched in 1781 from Howdon Dock. The French captured her in 1783, but 36 hours later the British recaptured her. She then distinguished herself in the French Revolutionary Wars by capturing several prizes, though she did not participate in any major actions. She also served in the Napoleonic Wars. She was sold in 1816.
Corona was a 40-gun Pallas-class frigate of the Italian Navy. The French built her in Venice in 1807 for the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy. The British captured Corona at the Battle of Lissa and took her into the Royal Navy as HMS Daedalus. She grounded and sank off Ceylon in 1813 while escorting a convoy.
Armide was a 40-gun frigate of the French Navy, lead ship of her class, and launched in 1804 at Rochefort. She served briefly in the French Navy before the Royal Navy captured her in 1806. She went on to serve in the Royal Navy until 1815 when she was broken up.
HMS Redwing was a Cruizer-class brig-sloop of the British Royal Navy. Commissioned in 1806, she saw active service in the Napoleonic Wars, mostly in the Mediterranean, and afterwards served off the West Coast of Africa, acting to suppress the slave trade. She was lost at sea in 1827.
HMS Swallow was a Cruizer-class brig-sloop launched in December 1805, nine months late. She served the Royal Navy through the Napoleonic Wars, capturing numerous privateers. After the end of the wars she was broken up in 1815.
HMS Grasshopper was a Cruizer-class brig-sloop of the Royal Navy. She was launched in 1806, captured several vessels, and took part in two notable actions before the Dutch captured her in 1811. She then served The Netherlands navy until she was broken up in 1822.
References
Famous Ships of the British Navy. Stories of enterprise and daring of British Seamen ... With an appendix on iron-clad ships, a chronological table of British engagements at sea, etc. Virtue & Company. 1868.
The Living Age ...: Vol. 100. Littell, Son and Company. 1869.
Grocott, Terence (1797). Shipwrecks of the Revolutionary & Napoleonic Eras. London: Chatham. ISBN1861760302.
Winfield, Rif (2007). British Warships of the Age of Sail 1794–1817: Design, Construction, Careers and Fates. Seaforth. ISBN1-86176-246-1.
Winfield, Rif (2008). British Warships in the Age of Sail 1793–1817: Design, Construction, Careers and Fates. Seaforth. ISBN1-86176-246-1.
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