Service history
British career
The frigate was built at Rotherhithe between 1756 and 1759 and was commissioned into the Royal Navy as HMS Minerva during the Seven Years' War. Under the command of Captain Alexander Hood, she took part in the Battle of Quiberon Bay on 20 November 1759. [1] In mid-1761 prize money was paid to the crews of ships taking part in the battle, and also to the crews of Intrepid and Minerva, for the capture of St. Simon. [2]
At daybreak on 24 January 1761 Minerva, still under the command of Captain Hood, encountered a large two-decker ship about 90 nautical miles (170 km; 100 mi) north-west of Cabo de Peñas in northern Spain. Minerva gave chase and finally caught her at 10.20 a.m. During a brisk engagement lasting no more than 40 minutes the enemy ship lost her main and fore top-mast, while soon after Minerva lost her bowsprit and fore-mast. Both ships were obliged to break off the action to clear the wreckage, but Minerva was ready to resume the fight first and closed with the enemy again at 4 p.m., forcing her to strike her colours after an hour. She proved to be the French ship Warwick (formerly HMS Warwick, captured in 1756), a 60-gun ship, but armed en flûte with only 34 guns, under the command M. le Vegerde Belair. She had sailed from Rochfort on 20 January, bound for the Isle de France (now Mauritius) loaded with provisions, ammunition, and stores, and also transporting a detachment of 74 soldiers and six other passengers. Warwick had 14 killed and 32 wounded, while aboard Minerve 14 were killed, and 34 wounded, three of whom later died. [3]
On 15 February 1762 at the Downs, prize money was paid to the crews of Minerva and Edgar, for the capture of the French privateer Ecureuil and the recapture of the brig Elizabeth. [4] Prize money for Warwick was paid from 19 July 1762 at Portsmouth. [5]
During the American Revolutionary War Minerva was part of the West Indies Squadron under Admiral Peter Parker. On 14 August 1778 she captured the American 50-ton schooner Fanny off Hispaniola, sailing from Connecticut with a cargo of timber. [6]
On 22 August 1778, Minerva, under the command of Captain John Stott, and unaware that France had declared war on Britain met the French 32-gun frigate Concorde, under Capitaine Le Gardeur de Tilly. Stott, mistaking her for a harmless merchantman, approached to speak to her, but Concorde fired two broadsides into her before Minerva could reply. The British were caught off guard, and suffered further misfortune when a powder explosion under the half-deck dismounted three guns, and killed or wounded eighteen men. Captain Stott was also severely wounded in the head and was carried below. After two and a half hours, Minerva surrendered, her mizzen-mast having gone overboard and her other masts tottering, her wheel destroyed, and having lost her Captain and First Lieutenant. [7]
Second British career
The Royal Navy recommissioned her under the name HMS Recovery, as another HMS Minerva had been commissioned after she was lost. She was laid up in 1783 and sold the following year. [8]
Eight vessels of the British Royal Navy have been named HMS Minerva, after the goddess Minerva of Roman mythology.
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Admiral of the Red Sir William Cornwallis, was a Royal Navy officer. He was the brother of Charles Cornwallis, the 1st Marquess Cornwallis, British commander at the siege of Yorktown. Cornwallis took part in a number of decisive battles including the siege of Louisbourg in 1758, when he was 14, and the Battle of the Saintes but is best known as a friend of Lord Nelson and as the commander-in-chief of the Channel Fleet during the Napoleonic Wars. He is depicted in the Horatio Hornblower novel, Hornblower and the Hotspur.
Courageux was a 74-gun ship of the line of the French Navy, launched in 1753. She was captured by the Royal Navy in 1761 and taken into service as HMS Courageux. In 1778 she joined the Channel Fleet, and she was later part of the squadron commanded by Commodore Charles Fielding that controversially captured a Dutch convoy on 31 December 1779, in what became known as the Affair of Fielding and Bylandt. On 4 January 1781, Courageux recaptured Minerva in a close-range action west of Ushant that lasted more than an hour. That April, Courageux joined the convoy under George Darby which successfully relieved the Great Siege of Gibraltar.
HMS Lively was a 32-gun fifth-rate Alcmene-class frigate of the British Royal Navy launched on 23 October 1794 at Northam, Devon. She took part in three actions one a single-ship action, one a major battle, and one a cutting-out boat expedition – that would in 1847 qualify her crews for the issuance of the Naval General Service Medal. Lively was wrecked in 1798.
Minerve was a 40-gun Minerve-class frigate of the French Navy. The British captured her twice and the French recaptured her once. She therefore served under four names before being broken up in 1814:
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HMS Warwick was a 60-gun fourth-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, built to the 1719 Establishment at Plymouth by P. Lock. The keel was laid down on 1 April 1730, and the ship was launched on 25 October 1733, and completed on 24 August 1734.
HMS Boreas was a 28-gun Coventry-class sixth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy. Built in 1757, she was one of five frigates of the class built of fir rather than oak. Boreas saw service during the Seven Years' War and took part in two actions at sea. She assisted in the capture of the 36-gun French frigate Diane in April 1758, and her most famous engagement was the capture of the French frigate Sirène in October 1760. She was sold out of the service in 1770.
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Minerve was a 40-gun frigate of the French Navy, lead ship of her class. She operated in the Mediterranean during the French Revolutionary Wars. Her crew scuttled her at Saint-Florent to avoid capture when the British invaded Corsica in 1794, but the British managed to raise her and recommissioned her in the Royal Navy as the 38-gun fifth rate HMS St Fiorenzo.
Concorde was a 32-gun frigate of the French Navy, lead ship of her class. Built in Rochefort in 1777, she entered service with the French early in the American War of Independence and was soon in action, capturing HMS Minerva in the West Indies. She survived almost until near the end of the war when HMS Magnificent captured her in 1783. Not immediately brought into service due to the draw-down in the navy after the end of the war, Concorde underwent repairs and returned to active service with the outbreak of war with France in 1793 as the fifth-rate HMS Concorde.
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Captain Alexander Hood, in 1759, inserted is the scene where Hood recaptured Warwick
Battle between the french frigate Concorde and the English frigate Minerve 22 August 1778
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