HMS Monsieur was the former 40-gun French privateer Monsieur, built at Le Havre between July 1778 and 1779, then armed at Granville. The Royal Navy captured her in 1780 and subsequently put her into service as a 36-gun Fifth Rate. This frigate was sold in 1783.
From August 1779 to March 1780, Nicholas Guidelou was her captain.[2] On her first cruise, in the space of four months, he captured 28 prizes off the English and Irish coasts.[3] Only three of his prizes were retaken,[1] and he brought into port 543 prisoners and 120 cannon.[4] King Louis XVI honoured Guidelou with a sword and a letter of thanks.[3]
On 28 March 1779, Monsieur captured the Scots letter of marqueLeveller, off the harbour of Cork.[5] Two days later, five leagues off Cape Clear, Monsieur captured the Polly, sailing for Liverpool. After Polly was ransomed for 1250 guineas, the privateer let her continue her journey. The next day, 1 April, another French privateer fired at Polly, but she was able to take refuge in the port of Skibbereen[6]
On 14 August 1779 John Paul Jones led a small squadron consisting of Bon Homme Richard, Alliance, Pallas, Vengeance, Cerf, and two privateers, Monsieur and Granville, out of Groa.[7] On 18 August they recaptured the Dutch vessel Verwagting, which an English privateer had captured eight days earlier. She had been carrying brandy and wine from Barcelona to Dunkirk. During the night Monsieur's captain took what he wanted from the prize, and then sent her off to Ostend under his name and with his prize crew. Jones overhauled the prize, put his own prize crew aboard, and sent her off to Lorient under his orders.[8] The next evening Monsieur left Jones's squadron. Granville left either at the same time or soon thereafter.
On 22 January 1780, the Lively was sailing from London to Liverpool when she fell victim to the Irish pirate vessel Black Prince. Lively escaped only to fall victim to Monsieur two days later. Monsieur took all the crew out of Lively, except for three boys, and put a 13-man prize crew aboard. On 4 February, the boys recaptured the ship while almost the entire prize crew was asleep. The next day they sailed to Kinsale where the letter of marqueHercules took possession.[6]
Capture
On 12 March 1780 the Third RateAlexander, under the command of Captain Lord Longford, was west of Scilly when she spotted a frigate.[9]Alexander gave chase and after 18 hours got within range, at which time the quarry raised French colours. The two vessels exchanged fire for some two hours, the quarry using stern chasers to answer Alexander's bow chasers. As Alexander pulled alongside the quarry, Alexander's fore-top-mast simply fell over due to rot.[9] Fortunately, Courageux, Captain Charles Fielding, had joined the engagement and she took up the chase. Some time and some firing later, the quarry struck. She turned out to be the Monsieur, of Granville, under the command of Jean de Bochet. She was armed with 40 guns, 12-pounders on the gundeck and 6-pounders on the quarterdeck and forecastle, and had a crew of 362 men. She was eight days out of Lorient but had taken no prizes. Longford described her as "a very fine frigate, almost new".[9]
British service
The prize was brought into Portsmouth harbour on 19 March, a week after her capture, and the Admiralty decided to take her into service.[10] She was refitted for Royal Naval service at a cost of £8,364 between May and October 1780, and re-armed as a 36-gun frigate.[10]
The Royal Navy commissioned her as HMS Monsieur under the command of Captain the Honourable Charles Phipps in July 1780.[10] On 10 December, Monsieur, in company with Vestal, St Albans, Portland, and Solebay captured Comtess de Buzancois.[11] A few days later, on 15 December, Monsieur captured the French cutter Chevreuil.[12]Chevreuil, of Saint-Malo, was armed with twenty 6-pounder guns, had a crew of 116 men, and had been launched on 1 March 1779.[13]
In 1781, Monsieur, now commanded by Captain the Honourable Seymour Finch, was serving with Vice-Admiral Darby's Channel Fleet. She therefore participated in the relief of Gibraltar, with the fleet sailing from Spithead on 13 March and arriving at Gibraltar on 12 April.[14] At some point, vessels of the Fleet engaged Spanish gunboats off Cadiz, during which Monsieur and Minerva had some men badly wounded.[15]Monsieur was among the many ships of Darby's fleet that shared in the prize money for the capture of Duc de Chartres, the Spanish frigate Santa Leocadia, and the French brig Trois Amis.[16]
On 9 October 1781, Monsieur, Minerva, Captain Charles Fielding, Flora and Crocodile] captured the American privateer Hercules,[17] of 20 guns and 120 men. The next day Minerva and Monsieur captured the American privateer Jason,[18] of 22 guns.[14]Minerva captured the privateer Wexford, which was six weeks out of Boston and had captured nothing. All three privateers were taken off Cape Clear Island, Ireland, and taken into Cork.[19]
On 12 December at the Second Battle of Ushant, Admiral Richard Kempenfelt captured 15 French transports.[14]Monsieur was among the many vessels that shared in the prize money for the Emille Sophie de Brest and the Margueritte,[20] and presumably other prizes.
In the middle of July 1782, Monsieur was in a squadron of four third rates and three frigates under the command of Captain Reeve, in the recently launched Crown, as commodore. In the Bay of Biscay the squadron captured three prizes: the Pigmy cutter, the Hermione, a victualler with 90 bullocks for the combined fleet, and a brig carrying salt.[21]
Fate
Following the conclusion of the war, Monsieur was paid off at Deptford in March 1783. She was sold for £820 on 25 September of that year.[10]
Twelve ships of the Royal Navy have been named HMS Active or HMS Actif, with a thirteenth announced:
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 Minerva was a 38-gun fifth-rate Royal Navy frigate. The first of four Minerva-class frigates, she was launched on 3 June 1780, and commissioned soon thereafter. In 1798 she was renamed Pallas and employed as a troopship. She was broken up in 1803.
HMS Melampus was a Royal Navy fifth-rate frigate that served during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. She captured numerous prizes before the British sold her to the Royal Netherlands Navy in 1815. With the Dutch, she participated in a major action at Algiers and, then, in a number of colonial punitive expeditions in the Dutch East Indies.
HMS Ambuscade was a 32-gun fifth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy, built in the Grove Street shipyard of Adams & Barnard at Depford in 1773. The French captured her in 1798 but the British recaptured her in 1803. She was broken up in 1810.
HMS Albemarle was a 28-gun sixth rate frigate of the Royal Navy. She had been built as the French merchantman Ménagère, which the French Navy purchased in 1779. A British squadron captured her in September and she was commissioned into service with the Royal Navy. Amongst her commanders in her short career was Captain Horatio Nelson, who would later win several famous victories over the French. The Navy sold her in 1784. She subsequently became a merchant vessel again. In 1791 she transported convicts to Port Jackson as part of the third fleet. She then sailed to India where she picked up a cargo on behalf of the British East India Company. As she was returning to England a French privateer captured her.
HMS Cleopatra was a 32-gun Amazon-class fifth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy. She had a long career, seeing service during the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War, and the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. During the latter wars she fought two notable engagements with larger French opponents. In the first engagement she was forced to surrender, but succeeded in damaging the French ship so badly that she was captured several days later, while Cleopatra was retaken. In the second she forced the surrender of a 40-gun frigate. After serving under several notable commanders she was broken up towards the end of the Napoleonic Wars.
HMS Porcupine was a 24-gun Porcupine-class sixth-rate post ship of the Royal Navy built in 1777 and broken up in 1805. During her career she saw service in the American War of Independence and the French Revolutionary Wars.
The Battle off Halifax took place on 28 May 1782 during the American Revolutionary War. It involved the American privateer Jack and the 14-gun Royal Naval brig HMS Observer off Halifax, Nova Scotia. Captain David Ropes commanded Jack, and Lieutenant John Crymes commanded Observer. The battle was "a long and severe engagement" in which Captain David Ropes was killed.
HMS Jupiter was a 50-gun Portland-class fourth-rate ship of the 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. She was also one of the fastest ships in the Royal Navy as shown by her attempt to capture the cutter Eclipse under Nathaniel Fanning.
HMS Crescent was a 28-gun Enterprise-class sixth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy. Crescent was launched in 1779. The French captured her in 1781. She was wrecked in 1786.
Countess of Scarborough was launched at Whitby in 1777. The Royal Navy hired her as a hired armed ship in 1777. She participated in the capture of two privateers before she and HMS Serapis succumbed to a small American flotilla off Flamborough Head in 1779. She briefly became a French privateer. Her subsequent fate is unknown.
Comte de Maurepas was a common name for French vessels in the 18th century. The name comes from that of the French statesman Jean-Frédéric Phélypeaux, Count of Maurepas.
The French frigate Aigle was launched in 1780 as a privateer. The French Navy purchased her in 1782, but the British captured her that same year and took her into the Royal Navy as the 38-gun fifth rate HMS Aigle. During the French Revolutionary Wars she served primarily in the Mediterranean, where she was wrecked in 1798.
HMS Resolution was a cutter that the Royal Navy purchased in 1779. She captured two French privateers in 1781 and a Dutch privateer in 1783 after a single ship action. Resolution captured one more small French privateer in June 1797; later that month Resolution went missing in the North Sea, presumed to have foundered.
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 Pearl was a fifth-rate, 32-gun British Royal Navy frigate of the Niger-class. Launched at Chatham Dockyard in 1762, she served in British North America until January 1773, when she sailed to England for repairs. Returning to North America in March 1776, to fight in the American Revolutionary War, Pearl escorted the transports which landed troops in Kip's Bay that September. Much of the following year was spent on the Delaware River where she took part in the Battle of Red Bank in October. Towards the end of 1777, Pearl joined Vice-Admiral Richard Howe's fleet in Narragansett Bay and was still there when the French fleet arrived and began an attack on British positions. Both fleets were forced to retire due to bad weather and the action was inconclusive. Pearl was then despatched to keep an eye on the French fleet, which had been driven into Boston.
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.
Butterworth was launched in 1778 in France as the highly successful 32-gun privateer Américaine, of Granville. The British Royal Navy captured her early in 1781. She first appeared in a commercial role in 1784 as America, and was renamed in 1785 as Butterworth. She served primarily as a whaler in the Greenland whale fisheries. New owners purchased her in 1789. She underwent a great repair in 1791 that increased her size by almost 20%. She is most famous for her role in the "Butterworth Squadron", which took her and two ship's tenders on an exploration, sealing, otter fur, and whaling voyage to Alaska and the Pacific Coast of North America. She and her consorts are widely credited with being the first European vessels to enter, in 1794, what is now Honolulu harbour. After her return to England in 1795, Butterworth went on three more whaling voyages to the South Pacific, then Africa, and then the South Pacific again. In 1802 she was outward bound on her fourth of these voyage, this to the South Pacific, when she was lost.
HMS Pilote was a cutter launched for the French Navy at Dunkirk in 1778. The British Royal Navy captured her in 1779 and took her into service under her existing name. It sold her in 1799.
References
Beatson, Robert (1804) Naval and military memoirs of Great Britain from the year 1727, to the present time .... (Edinburgh:J. Strachan ..., and P. Hill).
Brooks, Eldridge Streeter (1902) The heroic life of John Paul Jones: the first captain of the United States Navy. (DeWolfe, Fiske).
Cartwright, George (1911) Captain Cartwright and his Labrador journal. (D. Estes & company).
Demerliac, Alain (1996). La Marine de Louis XVI: Nomenclature des Navires Français de 1774 à 1792 (in French). Éditions Ancre. ISBN9782906381230. OCLC468324725.
United States, Naval War Records Office (1907) John Paul Jones: commemoration at Annapolis, April 24, 1906. (Government Printing Office).
Guidelou (1858) Notice sur la ville de Granville. (Imprimerie de Noel Got).
Linguet (n.d.) Mercure historique et politique de Bruxelles. (Panckouke).
Williams, Gomer (1897). History of the Liverpool Privateers and Letters of Marque: With an Account of the Liverpool Slave Trade. W. Heinemann.
Winfield, Rif (2007). British Warships in the Age of Sail 1714–1792: Design, Construction, Careers and Fates. Seaforth. ISBN978-1844157006.
This article includes data released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported UK: England & Wales Licence, by the National Maritime Museum, as part of the Warship Histories project.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
France
United Kingdom
