History | |
---|---|
Great Britain | |
Name | HMS Diligent |
Acquired | 1790 by purchase |
Decommissioned | 1795 |
Fate | Harbour duties 1795; ultimate disposal currently unknown |
General characteristics [1] | |
Type | Schooner |
Tonnage | 89 (bm) |
Complement | 20 |
Armament | 4 × 3-pounder guns |
HMS Diligent (or Diligente, or Diligence), was a small mercantile schooner that the Royal Navy purchased locally in 1790 for the Nova Scotia station. She helped capture Saint Pierre in 1793 and was sold in 1794. She then served on harbour duties at Halifax, carrying water and stores to the naval squadron stationed there.
In 1790, Rear Admiral Sir Richard Hughes received permission to buy three light-draft schooners that could sail in shoal waters where the Navy's regular vessels could not go and so assist in the suppression of smuggling. The three were Diligent, Chatham, and Alert. [2] Alert was wrecked in 1791, but Hughes then sent Diligent and Chatham to New York in alternate months to get the mail and dispatches, which were being routed through there and otherwise might sit there for several months. The experiment was beset by difficulties but by 1793 the service apparently was working. [2]
In April Alligator, under the command of Captain William Afleck, stopped at Halifax on her way to the Leeward Islands. War with France having broken out, the authorities decided to capture St Pierre and Miquelon. Alligator and Diligence sailed, with three transports carrying troops under the command of Brigadier General James Ogilvie on 7 May. The expeditionary force captured Saint Pierre on 14 May; they also captured 18 small vessels carrying fish, and two American schooners with provisions and naval stores. [3] Trepassey arrived a day later and then sailed to Miquelon to complete the conquest. Prize money for the capture of the islands was paid in October 1796. [4]
The Navy sold Chatham and Diligent off in 1795. After they had sat idle for some time, the Navy sold Chatham and converted Diligent to harbour duties. [1] [5]
HMS Thunderer was a ship of the line of the Royal Navy, built in 1783. She carried 74-guns, being classified as a third rate. During her service she took part in several prominent naval battles of the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars; including the Glorious First of June, the Battle of Cape Finisterre and the Battle of Trafalgar.
HMS Babet was a 20-gun sixth-rate post ship of the British Royal Navy. She had previously been a corvette of the French Navy under the name Babet, until her capture in 1794, during the French Revolutionary Wars. She served with the British, capturing several privateers and other vessels, and was at the Battle of Groix. She disappeared in the Caribbean in 1800, presumably having foundered.
HMS Boxer was a 12-gun Bold-class gun-brig built and launched in July 1812. The ship had a short service history with the British Royal Navy before the 16-gun USS Enterprise captured her near Portland, Maine in September 1813. She then went on to have at least a decade-long commercial career.
Médée was an Iphigénie-class 32-gun frigate of the French Navy. The British captured her in 1800 and took her into service as HMS Medee, but never commissioned her into the Royal Navy, instead using her as a prison ship.
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 to warrant being taken out of service and then broken up in 1803.
HMS Epervier was an 18-gun Cruizer-class brig-sloop of the Royal Navy, built by Ross at Rochester, England, and launched on 2 December 1812. USS Peacock captured her in 1814 and took her into service. USS Epervier disappeared in 1815 while carrying dispatches reporting the signing of a treaty with the Dey of Algiers.
HMS Halifax was a ship-rigged sloop of the Merlin class built in 1806 for the British Royal Navy at the Naval Yard in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Built to fill a pressing need for coastal patrol sloops on the North American Station, Halifax was one of the few warships built at Halifax Naval Yard in the Age of Sail as the yard's primary function was supply and refit.
HMS Alligator was a 28-gun Enterprise-class sixth rate frigate of the Royal Navy. She was originally ordered during the American War of Independence but was completed too late to see service during the conflict. Instead she had an active career during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.
HMS Mosquidobit was the Chesapeake-built six-gun schooner Lynx that the British Royal Navy captured and took into service in 1813. She was sold into commercial service in 1820 and nothing is known of her subsequent fate.
HMS Ferret was a Royal Navy Cruizer-class brig-sloop built by Benjamin Tanner at Dartmouth and launched in 1806, 19 months late. She served on the Jamaica, Halifax, and Leith stations during which time she took three privateers as prizes before she was wrecked in 1813.
HMS Bream was a British Royal Navy Ballahoo-class schooner of four 12-pounder carronades and a crew of 20. The prime contractor for the vessel was Goodrich & Co., in Bermuda, and she was launched in 1807. Bream operated primarily in North American waters and had an uneventful career until the War of 1812. She then captured two small American privateers and assisted in the recovery of a third, much larger one. She also captured a number of small prizes before she was sold or broken up in 1816.
HMS Adamant was a 50-gun Portland-class fourth rate warship of the British Royal Navy. She served during the American War of Independence, the French Revolutionary Wars, and the Napoleonic Wars in a career that spanned thirty years.
HMS Marie Antoinette was a 10-gun two-masted sloop. She was built in France and was originally called Marie Antoinette. During the French Revolution, she was rerequisitoned and renamed Convention Nationale. A British squadron under Commodore Ford captured her in 1793. The Royal Navy took her into service under her original name, Marie Antoinette. She took part in operations around Saint-Domingue until her crew mutinied in 1797 and carried her into a French port. Her subsequent fate is unknown.
The Newfoundland expedition was a series of fleet manoeuvres and amphibious landings in the coasts of Newfoundland, Labrador and Saint Pierre and Miquelon carried out by the combined French and Spanish fleets during the French Revolutionary Wars. This expedition, composed of seven ships of the line and three frigates under the orders of Rear-Admiral Richery sailed from Cadiz in August 1796 accompanied by a much stronger Spanish squadron, commanded by General Solano, which had the aim of escorting it to the coast of Newfoundland.
Gracieuse was a 32-gun Charmante-class frigate of the French Navy. Renamed to Unité in 1793, she took part in the French Revolutionary Wars. The Royal Navy captured her in 1796 off Île d'Yeu and brought her into British service as HMS Unite. She was sold in 1802
HMS Trepassey was the second vessel of her two vessel class, with both vessels being launched in 1789. John Henslow designed the small sloops for coastal patrol duties off Newfoundland, "to protect the fisheries and inquiring into abuses." In 1793, after the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars, she accepted the surrender of Miquelon. This appears to have been the highpoint of her career. She disappears from the records in 1807.
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.
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.
Blonde was a Coquette-class corvette of the French Navy, launched in 1781. The British Royal Navy captured her in 1793 and sold her in 1794, without apparently ever actually having taken her into service. Mercantile interests purchased her and initially named her Prince, but then renamed her Princess. She became a whaler until a French privateer captured her in 1796 during Princess's first whaling voyage.
HMS Bonetta was the French privateer Huit Amis, launched at Bordeaux in 1798 that the British Royal Navy captured in May. In her brief naval career she captured a number of small prizes, one of them a 2-gun privateer. Bonetta was wrecked in 1801.