Napoleonic Wars
She was commissioned in March 1803 at Portsmouth by Captain Hugh Downman, but in the following month command passed to Captain Thomas Gordon Caulfield. The ship was completed on 11 April 1803 and was ordered to the Downs on 7 May. As soon as her complement of men was completed and her bounty paid she sailed to join Admiral Edward Thornbrough's squadron off Goree.
On 19 May 1803 Jalouse captured Jong Jan Pieter. [1] Jalouse shared the prize money with Grampus and the gun-brigs Censor and Vixen, with whom she had been in company. [2]
Grampus returned to Portsmouth from Guernsey on 20 June to fit out for the East Indies and sailed with a convoy under her protection on 29 June. She carried £100,000 that the British East India Company was shipping to Bengal. On 16 October she was three days out of Rio and in company with the 74-gun third rate ship of the line HMS Russell. The East Indiamen they were escorting were Northampton, Lord Melville, Earl Spencer, Princess Mary, Anna, Ann, Glory, and Essex. [3] Grampus spent 1805 in the East Indies.
In March 1806 Captain James Haldane Tait took command of Grampus, leaving HMS Sir Francis Drake, while Grampus was employed in India. Later she was stationed at the Cape of Good Hope, and returned home in the summer of 1809, escorting a large convoy of East India Company ships that Captain Tait had taken under his protection at St. Helena. He was presented by the Court of directors with a sum of money for the purchase of a piece of plate. Grampus was paid off because of her poor condition at the end of 1809.
Grampus underwent a repair and refit at Chatham between then and February 1810; in January 1810 she was recommissioned under the command of Captain William Hanwell.
On 28 April 1811 Grampus joined an East India convoy to see them through to the coast of Africa. On 30 September, back at Portsmouth, a court martial was convened on board Raisonnable in Sheerness harbour to try Lieutenant John Cheshire of Grampus. Captain Hanwell accused him of insolence, contempt, and disrespect on 11 April and similar conduct, coupled with neglect of duty, on 15 April. The court found the charges unfounded and acquitted Lieutenant Cheshire.
In November 1811 Commodore George Cockburn hoisted his broad pendant on board Grampus, preparatory to proceeding as one of three commissioners (the others were Thomas Sydenham and John Philip Morier) nominated by the Prince Regent to mediate between Spain and her colonies. They received final instructions on 2 April 1812, and arrived in Cádiz on 21 April to find the Spanish government and the majority of the Cortes resolved to retain absolute control over their South American possessions instead of taking a liberal view as proposed by the British government. He returned from his unsuccessful mission on 4 August.
HMS Vanguard was a 74-gun third-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, launched on 6 March 1787 at Deptford. She was the sixth vessel to bear the name.
HMS Sceptre was a 74-gun third rate of the Royal Navy, built by Dudman of Deptford after a design by Sir William Rule, and launched in December 1802 at Deptford. She served in the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812 before being broken up in 1821.
HMS Africa was a 64-gun third-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, launched by Barnard at Deptford on 11 April 1781.
HMS Apollo, the fourth ship of the Royal Navy to be named for the Greek god Apollo, was a fifth-rate frigate of a nominal 36 guns. She was the name ship of the Apollo-class frigates. Apollo was launched in 1799, and wrecked with heavy loss of life in 1804.
HMS Goliath was a 74-gun third-rate ship of the line in the Royal Navy. She was launched on 19 October 1781 at Deptford Dockyard. She was present at the Battle of Cape St Vincent, Battle of the Nile, and Battle of Copenhagen. She was broken up in 1815.
HMS Ardent was a 64–gun third-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, launched on 9 April 1796 at Northfleet. She had been designed and laid down for the British East India Company who was going to name her Princess Royal, but the Navy purchased her before launching, for service as a warship in the French Revolutionary War.
HCS Bombay, later HMS Bombay and HMS Ceylon, was a teak-built fifth rate, 38-gun wooden warship built in the Bombay Dockyard for the Honourable East India Company (HEIC) and launched in 1793. The Royal Navy purchased her in 1805 and renamed her HMS Bombay. She served with the Royal Navy under that name until 1 July 1808, when she became HMS Ceylon. She was sold at Malta in 1857 and broken up in 1861.
HMS Buckingham was a 70-gun third-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, built at Deptford Dockyard by John Holland to the draught specified by the 1745 Establishment, and in active service during the Seven Years' War with France. With a crew of 520 she was one of the largest ships in the Navy at that time.
HMS Eurydice was a 24-gun Porcupine-class post ship of the Royal Navy built in 1781 and broken up in 1834. During her long career she saw service in the American War of Independence, the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars. She captured a number of enemy privateers and served in the East and West Indies, the Mediterranean and British and American waters.
HMS Juno was a Royal Navy 32-gun Amazon-class fifth rate. This frigate served during the American War of Independence, and the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.
HMS Decade was a 36-gun fifth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy. She was formerly the French ' Galathée-class frigateDécade, which the British had captured in 1798. She served with the British during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, and was sold out of the service in 1811.
HMS Weymouth was a 44-gun fifth rate of the Royal Navy. She was previously the merchantman Wellesley, built in Calcutta in 1796. She successfully defended herself against a French frigate, and made two voyages to Britain as an East Indiaman for the East India Company. The Admiralty purchased her in May 1804; she then became a storeship in 1806. On her last voyage for the Royal Navy, in 1820, she carried settlers to South Africa. She was then laid up in ordinary. In 1828, she was converted to a prison ship and sailed to Bermuda where she served as a prison hulk until 1865 when she was sold for breaking up.
HMS Venus was the name ship of the 36-gun Venus-class fifth-rate frigates of the Royal Navy. She was launched in 1758 and served for more than half a century until 1809. She was reduced from 36 to 32 guns in 1792. She was sold in 1822.
HMS Papillon was the French Navy's 12-gun brig Papillon, which the British captured in September 1803. She foundered in September 1805 with the loss of all her crew.
HMS Merlin was launched in 1801 in South Shields as the collier Hercules. In July 1803, with the resumption of war with France, the Admiralty purchased her. She was one of about 20 such vessels that the navy would then employ primarily for convoy escort duties. She served on active duty until 1810, capturing one small privateer. She then served as a receiving ship until 1836 when the navy sold her for breaking up.
HMS Hyaena was a 24-gun Porcupine-class post-ship of the Royal Navy launched in 1778. The French captured her in 1793, took her into service as Hyène, and then sold her. She became a privateer that the British captured in 1797. The Royal Navy took her back into service as Hyaena and she continued to serve until the Navy sold her in 1802. The shipowner Daniel Bennett purchased her and renamed her Recovery. She made seven voyages as a whaler in the Southern Whale Fishery and was broken up 1813.
The French ship Sophie was a slave vessel launched at Nantes in May 1790. Her owners commissioned her there as a privateer in 1793 after the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars. The French Navy, desperate for escort vessels, requisitioned her 21 April 1794. In May 1795 the French Navy returned her to her owners for use as a privateer. HMS Endymion captured her off the Irish Coast in September 1798. The Royal Navy then took Sophie into service. She then served in the North Sea, Baltic, Mediterranean, and East Indies until she was broken up in 1809.
Jalouse was an 18-gun Belliqueuse-class brig-corvette of the French Navy, built to a design by Pierre-Alexandre-Laurent Forfait, and launched in 1794 at Honfleur. The Royal Navy captured her in May 1797 and took her into service under her existing name. In British service she served primarily on the North Sea station where she captured three small French privateers, and many Dutch merchant vessels. She also participated with other British warships in two or three major cutting-out expeditions. She was broken up in 1807.
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.
HMS Eclipse was a French Navy Vésuve-class brick-canonnier or chaloupe-canonnière, (gunbrig) launched at Saint-Malo in 1793 as Volage. She was renamed Venteux in 1795 (possibly also Vérité on 30 May 1795, although this might have been a second ship of the same name. The British Royal Navy captured her in 1803 and took her into service as HMS Eagle, but then renamed her HMS Eclipse in 1804. She had a completely unremarkable career before the Navy sold her in 1807.
United Kingdom
