HMS Bellona was a 74-gun Bellona-class third-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy. Designed by Sir Thomas Slade, she was a prototype for the iconic 74-gun ships of the latter part of the 18th century. "The design of the Bellona class was never repeated precisely, but Slade experimented slightly with the lines, and the Arrogant, Ramillies, Egmont, and Elizabeth classes were almost identical in size, layout, and structure, and had only slight variations in the shape of the underwater hull. The Culloden-class ship of the line was also similar, but slightly larger. Thus over forty ships were near-sisters of the Bellona." Bellona was built at Chatham, starting on 10 May 1758, launched on 19 February 1760, and commissioned three days later. She was the second ship of the Royal Navy to bear the name, and saw service in the Seven Years' War, American Revolutionary War and the Napoleonic Wars.
HMS Intrepid was a 64-gun third-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, launched on 4 December 1770 at Woolwich. She was sold in 1828.
HMS Monmouth was a 64-gun third rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, launched on 23 April 1796 at Rotherhithe. She had been designed and laid down for the East India Company, but the Navy purchased her after the start of the French Revolutionary War. She served at the Battle of Camperdown and during the Napoleonic Wars. Hulked in 1815, she was broken up in 1834.
HMS Pompee was a 74-gun ship of the line of the British Royal Navy. Built as Pompée, a Téméraire-class ship of the French Navy, she was handed over to the British at Spithead by French royalists who had fled France after the Siege of Toulon by the French Republic, only a few months after being completed. After reaching Great Britain, Pompée was registered and recommissioned as HMS Pompee and spent the entirety of her active career with the Royal Navy until she was broken up in 1817.
HMS Swiftsure was a 70-gun third-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, launched in 1755 and in active service during the Seven Years' War. After a distinguished career at sea she was decommissioned in 1763 and sold into private hands ten years later.
Six ships of the Royal Navy have borne the name HMS Arrogant, or HMS Arrogante, whilst another was planned:
The Impérieuse was a 40-gun Minerve-class frigate of the French Navy. The Royal Navy captured her in 1793 and she served first as HMS Imperieuse and then from 1803 as HMS Unite. She became a hospital hulk in 1836 and was broken up in 1858.
HMS Castor was a 32-gun Amazon-class fifth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy. She served during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. The French briefly captured her during the Atlantic Campaign of May 1794 but she spent just 20 days in French hands as a British ship retook her before her prize crew could reach a French port. Castor eventually saw service in many of the theatres of the wars, spending time in the waters off the British Isles, in the Mediterranean and Atlantic, as well as the Caribbean.
HMS Howe was originally the teak-built Indian mercantile vessel Kaikusroo that Admiral Edward Pellew bought in 1805 to serve as a 40-gun frigate. In 1806 the Admiralty fitted her out as a 24-gun storeship and renamed her HMS Dromedary. She made numerous trips, including one notable one to Australia when she brought out Lachlan Macquarie and his family to replace William Bligh as governor of New South Wales. Later, she became a prison hulk in Bermuda. Her most recent contribution, however, is as the source of a rich archaeological site.
Seven ships of the Royal Navy have borne the name HMS Strombolo, or HMS Stromboli, after the volcano Stromboli, in Italy:
Exeter was a three-decker East Indiaman built by Perry and launched in 1792. She made eight voyages to the East Indies for the East India Company (EIC). More unusually, on separate voyages she captured a French frigate and participated in the Battle of Pulo Aura. She was sold for breaking up in 1811.
HMS Nymphe was a fifth-rate frigate of the British Royal Navy, formerly the French Nymphe, lead ship of her class. HMS Flora, under the command of Captain William Peere Williams, captured Nymphe off Ushant on 10 August 1780. Indiscriminately referred to as Nymph, Nymphe, La Nymph or La Nymphe in contemporary British sources, she served during the American, French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. On 19 May 1793, while under the command of Captain Edward Pellew, she captured the frigate Cléopâtre, the first French warship captured in a single-ship action of the war. After a long period of service in which she took part in several notable actions and made many captures, Nymphe was wrecked off the coast of Scotland on 18 December 1810.
The East Indies theatre of the French Revolutionary Wars was a series of campaigns related to the major European conflict known as the French Revolutionary Wars, fought between 1793 and 1801 between the new French Republic and its allies and a shifting alliance of rival powers. Although the Indian Ocean was separated by vast distance from the principal theatre of the conflict in Western Europe, it played a significant role due to the economic importance of the region to Great Britain, France's most constant opponent, of its colonies in India and the Far Eastern trade.
The French gun-vessel Eclair was one of 20 chasse-marées built in 1785 in southern Brittany for use as service craft in harbour construction at Cherbourg. In 1793 Martin or Jacques Fabien converted ten of them into chaloupes-canonnières (gun-vessels). One of these received the name Eclair. Sir Richard Strachan's squadron captured her in 1795 in Cartaret Bay, and the Royal Navy took her into service as HMS Eclair. She then sailed to the West Indies where she was probably out of service by 1801. In 1802 she was hulked under the name HMS Safety. She then served as a prison ship at Jamaica around 1808 to 1810. She may have been sold at Tortola in 1817/18, but in 1841 or so was brought back into service there as a receiving hulk. She was broken up in 1879.
The Macau Incident was an inconclusive encounter between a powerful squadron of French and Spanish warships and a British Royal Navy escort squadron in the Wanshan Archipelago off Macau on 27 January 1799. The incident took place in the context of the East Indies campaign of the French Revolutionary Wars, the allied squadron attempting to disrupt a valuable British merchant convoy due to sail from Qing Dynasty China. This was the second such attempt in three years; at the Bali Strait Incident of 1797 a French frigate squadron had declined to engage six East Indiamen on their way to China. By early 1799 the French squadron had dispersed, with two remaining ships deployed to the Spanish Philippines. There the frigates had united with the Spanish Manila squadron and sailed to attack the British China convoy gathering at Macau.
Brunswick was launched in 1792 as an East Indiaman for the British East India Company (EIC). She made five complete voyages for the EIC before the French captured her in 1805. Shortly thereafter she wrecked at the Cape of Good Hope.
Bombay Castle was launched in 1792 as an East Indiaman. She made six voyages for the British East India Company (EIC) before she was sold in 1807 for breaking up. In addition to carrying cargo for the EIC, she transported troops in one campaign, participated in a naval action in which she helped capture a French frigate, and played a leading role in an encounter between the French Navy and a fleet of East Indiamen in which the East Indiamen succeeded in bluffing the French to withdraw.
Shah Ardaseer was built at Bombay, probably in 1786. English transliterations of her name show her as Shah or Shaw + Adaseer, or Ardaseer, or Ardasier, or Adasier, or Ardasheer, or Ardeseer, or Ardesir. A fire on 13 September 1809 at Bombay burnt her. She then may have been recovered, repaired, and enlarged to become the hulk HMS Arrogant, which was moved to Trincomalee in 1822 and sold there in 1842.
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