French service: 2 × 4-pounder + 4 × 3-pounder guns added to the galliards
HMS Ariel was a 20-gun Sphinx-classsixth-ratepost ship of the Royal Navy. The French captured her in 1779, and she served during the American Revolutionary War for them, and later for the Americans, before reverting to French control. Her French crew scuttled Ariel in 1793 to prevent the British from recapturing her.
The Admiralty on 3 July 1776 ordered Ariel from John Perry & Co.'s Blackwall Yard. Perry & Co. laid down her keel that month and launched her on 7 July 1777. She was commissioned under Captain John Jackson, and cruised in the North Sea in August 1777. After a brief spell off the Norwegian and Danish coasts, she sailed for North America on 7 November.
In 1778 she captured several American vessels. While Ariel was under the command of John Becher on 31 March, she shared in the capture of the frigate USSVirginia.[2] (The Royal Navy took Virginia into service as HMS Virginia.)
On 25 May 1778, under command of Capt. Charles Phipps, she captured the schooner General Scott.[3] On 31 May she pursued a sloop until the sloop ran aground near Currituck, North Carolina. Bad weather prevented boarding.[4]
On 4 June Ariel captured the sloop Fanny.[5] Then on 27 August 1778 she captured the 16-gun "Congress" brig Resistance.[a]Resistance had sailed from Boston armed for war and in quest of the French fleet. Ariel burnt her.[5]
Ariel also shared in the prize money for a number of vessels captured between 2 January and 14 September. These were the sloops Betsy and Polly, brigs M'Cleary, Reprizal, Argyle, and Postillion, the schooner Chelsea, and the snowDavid.[7] On 12 May Ariel pursued the French polaccaGaston until her crew ran her aground near Cape Hatteras; her crew scuttled and abandoned Gaston. Ariel salvaged part of Gaston's cargo before burning her. Next, Ariel chased two schooners, one named Trader's Increase, ashore and burned them. On the 14th Ariel chased the schooner Two Friends ashore, captured her, and refloated her.[8]
Captain Charles Phipps took command of Ariel . Phipps and Ariel captured the American privateer New Broom on 22 October 1778, as well as the schooners Lark and Three Friends. New Broom was armed with 16 guns and had sailed from New London when Ariel and Savage stopped her off Nantucket shoals.[5] The Royal Navy took New Broom into service as Keppel.
The next year, in February, Captain Thomas Mackenzie replaced Phipps.
Capture
On 11 September 1779, whilst Ariel was cruising off Charleston, South Carolina, she sighted a strange sail and approached to investigate, unaware that the French fleet under Admiral d'Estaing had entered the theatre. As Mackenzie got closer he realized that the stranger was actually a frigate, accompanied by two brigs and a schooner, and that she was not responding to his signals. He therefore decided to sail for the Georgia shore. The frigate gradually overhauled Ariel and Mackenzie had no choice but to stand and fight. The enemy vessel was the 32-gun French frigateAmazone, under Lieutenant Lapérouse[9] After a ninety-minute flight in which Ariel lost her mizzen-mast and all her rigging and sustained casualties of four men dead and another 20 wounded, Mackenzie surrendered Ariel.[10] d'Estaing immediately exchanged the crew of Ariel and HMS Experiment, which he had captured the year before, for French prisoners. The crews of these two vessels then went on to man a variety of British vessels on the station.[9] The French took the captured ship into service as Ariel.
Ariel underwent repair and refitting at Lorient between March and October 1780.[11] The French then lent her to the American Continental Navy in October, where she served briefly as USS Ariel.
USS Ariel
John Paul Jones assumed command of Ariel in France. He changed her rigging to improve her sailing qualities, and removed 10 of her 26 guns to make room for more cargo. However, loading the ship and the need to obtain other vessels to carry the surplus cargo which Ariel could not hold delayed her departure. Ariel — accompanied by merchantmen Luke and Duke of Leinster, which Benjamin Franklin had chartered to take care of the surplus supplies — departed L'Orient on 5 September, but contrary winds held them up in Groix Roads for over a month. The trio finally put to sea on 7 October. However, the next day one of the most severe storms in the history of the French coast broke and wreaked great havoc in the area, destroying many ships. Ariel lost all of her masts, sprang leaks, and suffered much other damage. Only Jones's superb seamanship enabled her to stay afloat and then to limp back into Groix Roads under a jury rig on the morning of 12 October.
Luke—faster and less damaged than Ariel—also managed to get back to port, but sailed independently before Ariel's repairs could be completed; a British warship then captured Luke. No record has been found of Duke of Leinster after her departure on 7 October, so it is quite possible that she foundered during the hurricane.
More than two months passed before Ariel was again seaworthy. She finally got underway again on 18 October. Jones left much of Ariel's armament in France so he followed a southern route in the hope of avoiding encountering the Royal Navy.
Still, when Ariel had reached a point some 200 miles north of the Leeward Islands, a lookout reported a large ship that soon began to approach Ariel. Rather than risk his partially-armed only ship and the vital cargo and dispatches that she was carrying, Jones reluctantly fled. Jones hoped that she would shake off her pursuer during the night, but the stranger was in full sight when daylight returned the following morning, closer than she had been when last seen the previous evening.
Jones then decided to try to pass Ariel off as a British warship. When his pursuer reached hailing distance, Jones demanded that her captain identify himself and his ship. The stranger was the 20-gun British privateer Triumph, commanded by John Pindar. Jones then ordered Pindar to come on board Ariel with documents to verify his identity. When Pindar refused, Jones opened fire and forced his surprised enemy to surrender following a short and one-sided struggle. However, after Triumph had struck her colors, Pindar maneuvered his ship to Ariel's weather bow while the latter was lowering a boat for a prize crew, and then quickly escaped.
This engagement was John Paul Jones' last battle in the cause of American freedom, but he soon had to forestall a budding mutiny. He uncovered a plot by the English seamen whom he had enlisted from among British prisoners of war in France to fill out his crew (built around survivors from Bonhomme Richard), to take over Ariel; Jones put the troublemakers in irons. The rest of her voyage was uneventful; Ariel finally reached Philadelphia with her badly needed military stores—which included 437 barrels of gunpowder, 146 chests of arms, a large quantity of shot, sheet lead, and much medicine—on 18 February 1781.
At the beginning of March, Ariel—still in port discharging her cargo—fired a salute to celebrate Maryland's ratification of the Articles of Confederation activating the new nation's first central government.
Early in June 1781, Jones turned Ariel over to Anne-César, Chevalier de la Luzerne-the French minister to the United States—who manned her with a French crew for the voyage back to France.
In September 1782 Ariel and Surveillante captured the merchant vessel Grand Duc off the coast of Spain. The French navy briefly took Grand Duc into service before decommissioning, striking off, and selling her for £t 72,489 at Brest in 1783.[14]
Fate
After the French defeat at Neerwinden, her crew scuttled Ariel on the Scheldt in March 1793. The citizens of Bruges carried off her armament and stores.[11]
Notes
↑ Resistance was carried on the accounts of Nathaniel Shaw, Jr., Naval Agent at New London, Connecticut from April 1776 until November 1778. In December of 1777, while under the command of Captain Samuel Chew, she put into Boston with a prize whose £7,000 cargo had been destined for the West Indies. After the British captured Resistance in 1778, her name was struck from the lists of the Continental Navy.[6]
The second USS Boston was a 24-gun frigate, launched 3 June 1776 by Stephen and Ralph Cross, Newburyport, Massachusetts, and completed the following year. In American service she captured a number of British vessels. The British captured Boston at the fall of Charleston, South Carolina, renamed her HMS Charlestown, and took her into service. She was engaged in one major fight with two French frigates, which she survived and which saved the convoy she was protecting. The British sold Charlestown in 1783, immediately after the end of the war.
HMS Lively was a 20-gun post ship of the Royal Navy, launched in 1756. During the Seven Years' War she captured several vessels, most notably the French corvette Valeur in 1760. She then served during the American Revolutionary War, where she helped initiate the Battle of Bunker Hill. The French captured her in 1778, but the British recaptured her in 1781. She was sold in 1784.
Surveillante was an Iphigénie-class 32-gun frigate of the French Navy. She took part in the Naval operations in the American Revolutionary War, where she became famous for her battle with HMS Quebec; in 1783, she brought the news that the war was over to America. She later took part in the French Revolutionary Wars, and was eventually scuttled during the Expédition d'Irlande after sustaining severe damage in a storm. The wreck was found in 1979 and is now a memorial.
Sixteen ships of the Royal Navy have borne the name HMS Alert, while another was planned:
Nine ships of the Royal Navy have borne the name HMS Racehorse:
HMS Ambuscade was a 32-gun fifth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy, built in the Grove Street shipyard of Adams & Barnard at Deptford in 1773. The French captured her in 1798 but the British recaptured her in 1803. She was broken up in 1810.
The action of 11 September 1779 was a minor naval engagement that took place off Charles Town in the War of the American Independence between the French Navy and the Royal Navy. The battle ended with the capture of the British post ship Ariel by Amazone.
HMS Hinchinbrook was the French privateer Astrée, which the British captured in 1778 and took into the Royal Navy as a 28-gun sixth-rate frigate. She was Captain Horatio Nelson's second navy command, after the brig HMS Badger, and his first as post-captain. She was wrecked, with no loss of life, in January 1783.
HMS Lowestoffe was a 32-gun fifth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy. Built during the latter part of the Seven Years' War, she went on to see action in the American War of Independence and the French Revolutionary War, and served often in the Caribbean. A young Horatio Nelson served aboard her shortly after passing his lieutenant's examination.
HMS Camilla was a Royal Navy 20-gun Sphinx-class post ship. Camilla was built in Chatham Dockyard to a design by John Williams and was launched in 1776. She served in the American Revolution, the French Revolutionary Wars, and the Napoleonic Wars, before being sold in 1831.
HMS Swift has been the name of numerous ships of the Royal Navy:
HMS Leith, also known as HM hired armed ship Leith, was launched in 1744 or 1746 in the British "Plantations", more specifically, the colony of Maryland. From 1764 to 1777 she was a Greenlandman, that is a whaler, in the waters east of Greenland. Between 1777 and 1782 she served the Royal Navy as a transport and hired armed naval ship. She was last listed in 1783.
HMS Surprise was a 28-gun Enterprise-class sixth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy, which served throughout the American Revolutionary War and was broken up in 1783.
HMS Boreas was a modified Mermaid-class sixth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy. She was first commissioned in August 1775 under Captain Charles Thompson. She was built at Blaydes Yard in Hull to a design by Sir Thomas Slade at a cost of £10,000. She was fitted out at Chatham Docks.
Hon. Charles Phipps was an officer in the Royal Navy. He served during the American War of Independence, seeing action in a number of battles and engagements. He also went on to have a career in Parliament sitting in the House of Commons from 1779 to 1786.
HMS Port Royal was the former French armed merchant vessel Comte de Maurepas, which the British captured in 1778. The British armed her with 18 guns and took her into the Royal Navy under her new name. The Spanish captured her at the Siege of Pensacola in 1781.
Bunker Hill was a Massachusetts privateer sloop, first commissioned in 1778. She made two cruises, capturing three prizes, but during her second cruise the Royal Navy captured her at Saint Lucia. The Royal Navy took her into service as HMS Surprize. She served in the Caribbean, and was one of the two sloops that captured Essequibo and Demerara in March 1781. She sailed to Britain in late 1782 where the Navy sold her in 1783. The French Navy may have purchased her. If so, they sold her in 1789.
HMS Barbuda was commissioned into the Royal Navy in 1780 after having briefly served as an American privateer. Barbuda was one of the two sloops that captured Demerara and Essequibo in 1781, but the French Navy captured her there in 1782 and took her into service as Barboude. The French Navy sold her to private owners in 1786, and she served briefly as a privateer in early 1793 before the French Navy purchased her again and named her Légère. She served them until mid-1796 when the Royal Navy captured her and took her into service as HMS Legere. She was wrecked off the coast of Colombia, without loss of life, in February 1801.
HMS Ceres was an 18-gun sloop launched in 1777 for the British Royal Navy that the French captured in December 1778 off Saint Lucia. The French Navy took her into service as Cérès. The British recaptured her in 1782 and renamed her HMS Raven, only to have the French recapture her again early in 1783. The French returned her name to Cérès, and she then served in the French Navy until sold at Brest in 1791.
The French brig Duc de Chartres was built between 1779 and 1780 at Le Havre as a 24-gun privateer. As a privateer she captured one British warship before in 1781 the Royal Navy captured her. The Royal Navy took her into service as HMS Duc de Chartres. She then captured several American privateers and armed merchant vessels, and one French naval corvette in a noteworthy single-ship action. The Navy sold Duc de Chartres in 1784.
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Monaque, Rémi (2000). Les aventures de Louis-René de Latouche-Tréville, compagnon de La Fayette et commandant de l'Hermione (in French). Paris: SPM.
Roche, Jean-Michel (2005). Dictionnaire des bâtiments de la flotte de guerre française de Colbert à nos jours. Vol.1. Group Retozel-Maury Millau. ISBN978-2-9525917-0-6.
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