HMS Astraea was a 32-gun fifth rate Active-class frigate of the Royal Navy. Fabian at E. Cowes launched her in 1781, and she saw action in the American War of Independence as well as during the Napoleonic Wars. She is best known for her capture of the larger French frigate Gloire in a battle on 10 April 1795, while under the command of Captain Lord Henry Paulet. She was wrecked on 23 March 1808 off the coast of Anegada in the British Virgin Islands.
HMS Speedy was a 14-gun Speedy-class brig of the British Royal Navy. Built during the last years of the American War of Independence, she served with distinction during the French Revolutionary Wars.
HMS Jason was a 38-gun Artois-class fifth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy. She served during the French Revolutionary Wars, but her career came to an end after just four years in service when she struck an uncharted rock off Brest and sank on 13 October 1798. She had already had an eventful career, and was involved in several engagements with French vessels.
Seine was a 38-gun French Seine-class frigate that the Royal Navy captured in 1798 and commissioned as the fifth-rate HMS Seine. On 20 August 1800, Seine captured the French ship Vengeance in a single ship action that would win for her crew the Naval General Service Medal. Seine's career ended in 1803 when she hit a sandbank near the Texel.
The Mediterranean campaign of 1798 was a series of major naval operations surrounding a French expeditionary force sent to Egypt under Napoleon Bonaparte during the French Revolutionary Wars. The French Republic sought to capture Egypt as the first stage in an effort to threaten British India and support Tipu Sultan, and thus force Great Britain to make peace. Departing Toulon in May 1798 with over 40,000 troops and hundreds of ships, Bonaparte's fleet sailed southeastwards across the Mediterranean Sea. They were followed by a small British squadron under Rear-Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson, later reinforced to 13 ships of the line, whose pursuit was hampered by a lack of scouting frigates and reliable information. Bonaparte's first target was the island of Malta, which was under the government of the Knights of St. John and theoretically granted its owner control of the Central Mediterranean. Bonaparte's forces landed on the island and rapidly overwhelmed the defenders, securing the port city of Valletta before continuing to Egypt. When Nelson learned of the French capture of the island, he guessed the French target to be Egypt and sailed for Alexandria, but passed the French during the night of 22 June without discovering them and arrived off Egypt first.
Admiral Sir Manley Dixon, KCB was a prominent Royal Navy officer during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Born into a military family in the late 1750s or early 1760s, Dixon joined the Navy and served as a junior officer in the American Revolutionary War, gaining an independent command in the last year of the war. Promoted to captain seven years later, Dixon then served in the French Revolutionary Wars in the Channel Fleet and off Ireland until 1798, when he gained command of the 64-gun HMS Lion with the Mediterranean Fleet. Employed in the blockade of Cartagena, on 15 July 1798 Lion fought four Spanish frigates and successfully captured one, Santa Dorothea. Transferred to the Siege of Malta later the same year, Dixon remained off the island for two years, capturing the French ship of the line Guillaume Tell at the action of 31 March 1800. After the Peace of Amiens, Dixon remained in various active commands but saw no action and later retired, advancing to a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath and a full admiral.
Rear-Admiral Francis William Fane son of John Fane (1751–1824) was a British Royal Navy officer of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars who served in several engagements while commissioned on the frigate HMS Terpsichore, including the blockade of Alexandria. There he was commended for rescuing five French soldiers from a group of Bedouin partisans, despite coming under fire from the people he was trying to rescue. He advanced rapidly through the ranks, and by 1810 was in command of his own frigate, participating in the Peninsular War. It was during this campaign that he was captured during an operation at Palamós, remaining a prisoner for the remainder of the war. After the peace of 1815, Fane did not continue in active service, and although he was promoted to admiral in 1837 he did not serve again at sea.
The action of 15 July 1798 was a minor naval battle of the French Revolutionary Wars, fought off the Spanish Mediterranean coast by the Royal Navy ship of the line HMS Lion under Captain Manley Dixon and a squadron of four Spanish Navy frigates under Commodore Don Felix O'Neil. Lion was one of several ships sent into the Western Mediterranean by Vice-Admiral Earl St Vincent, commander of the British Mediterranean Fleet based at the Tagus in Portugal during the late spring of 1798. The Spanish squadron was a raiding force that had sailed from Cartagena in Murcia seven days earlier, and was intercepted while returning to its base after an unsuccessful cruise. Although together the Spanish vessels outweighed the British ship, individually they were weaker and Commodore O'Neil failed to ensure that his manoeuvres were co-ordinated. As a result, one of the frigates, Santa Dorotea, fell out of the line of battle and was attacked by Lion.
Hugh Downman was an officer of the Royal Navy who saw service during the American War of Independence and the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, eventually rising to the rank of admiral.
HMS Drake was a 14-gun brig-sloop of the Royal Navy. She was bought from a commercial builder during the early years of the American War of Independence, and went on to support operations in the English Channel and the Caribbean. At one stage she assisted an attack on a French-held island, an expedition commanded by a young Horatio Nelson. Laid up for a time after the end of the American War of Independence, she returned to service shortly before the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars. Drake spent most of her time in Caribbean waters, until being declared unfit for service in 1800 and deleted from the navy lists.
Ganteaume's expeditions of 1801 were three connected major French Navy operations of the spring of 1801 during the French Revolutionary Wars. A French naval squadron from Brest under Contre-amiral Honoré Ganteaume, seeking to reinforce the besieged French garrison in Ottoman Egypt, made three separate but futile efforts to reach the Eastern Mediterranean. The French army in Egypt had been trapped there shortly after the start of the Napoleonic campaign in Egypt in 1798, when the French Mediterranean Fleet was destroyed at the Battle of the Nile. Since that defeat, the French Navy had maintained only a minimal presence in the Mediterranean Sea, while the more numerous British and their allies had succeeded in blockading and defeating several French bases almost unopposed.
The action of 13 October 1796 was a minor naval engagement of the French Revolutionary Wars, fought off the Mediterranean coast of Spain near Cartagena between the British Royal Navy 32-gun frigate HMS Terpsichore under Captain Richard Bowen and the Spanish Navy 34-gun frigate Mahonesa under Captain Tomás de Ayalde. The action was the first battle of the Anglo-Spanish War, coming just eight days after the Spanish declaration of war. In a battle lasting an hour and forty minutes, Mahonesa was captured.
HMS Peterel was a 16-gun Pylades-class ship-sloop of the Royal Navy. She was launched in 1794 and was in active service until 1811. Her most famous action was the capture of the French brig Ligurienne when shortly after Peterel captured two merchant ships and sent them off with prize crews, three French ships attacked her. She drove two on shore and captured the largest, the 14-gun Ligurienne. The Navy converted Peterel to a receiving ship at Plymouth in 1811 and sold her in 1827.
The Croisière de Bruix was the principal naval campaign of the year 1799 during the French Revolutionary Wars. The expedition began in April 1799 when the bulk of the French Atlantic Fleet under Vice-Admiral Étienne Eustache Bruix departed the base at Brest, evading the British Channel Fleet which was blockading the port and tricking the commander Admiral Lord Bridport into believing their true destination was Ireland. Passing southwards, the French fleet narrowly missed joining with an allied Spanish Navy squadron at Ferrol and was prevented by an easterly gale from uniting with the main Spanish fleet at Cádiz before entering the Mediterranean Sea. The Mediterranean was under British control following the destruction of the French Mediterranean Fleet at the Battle of the Nile in August 1798, and a British fleet nominally under Admiral Earl St Vincent was stationed there. Due however to St. Vincent's ill-health, operational control rested with Vice-Admiral Lord Keith. As Keith sought to chase down the French, the Spanish fleet followed Bruix into the Mediterranean before being badly damaged in a gale and sheltering in Cartagena.
Nossa Senhora da Conceição was launched at Lisbon on 13 July 1771 for the Portuguese Navy as a first rate ship of the line of 90 guns. In 1793 she was the flagship of the squadron that the Portuguese Navy provided to assist the British Royal Navy's Channel Fleet. The next year the Portuguese government refitted her and changed her name to Príncipe Real. In 1798-1800 Príncipe Real served in the Mediterranean as the flagship of the Portuguese squadron assisting Admiral Nelson.
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.
HMS Florentina, was the Spanish frigate Santa Florentina, built in 1786 at Cartagena, Spain to a design completed on 17 October 1785 by José Romero Fernández de Landa, modified from his earlier design for the Santa Casilda. The British Royal Navy captured her on 6 April 1800 and took her into service as HMS Florentina. She served in the Mediterranean until she returned to Britain in 1802 after the Treaty of Amiens. There the Admiralty had her laid-up in ordinary and she was sold in 1803.
HMS Melpomene was a 38-gun frigate of the Royal Navy. Originally a French vessel, she was captured at Calvi on 10 August 1794 and first saw British service in the English Channel, where she helped to contain enemy privateering. In October 1798, she chased a French frigate squadron sent to find the French fleet under Jean-Baptiste-François Bompart, that was routed at the Battle of Tory Island and in August 1799, she joined Andrew Mitchell's squadron for the Anglo-Russian invasion of Holland.
HMS Strombolo was launched in 1795 at North Shields as the mercantile Leander. The Royal Navy purchased her in 1797, converted her to a bomb-vessel, and renamed her. She participated in the capture of Malta in 1800. The Navy laid her up in 1802 and had her broken up in 1809.
Thomas Charles Brodie was an officer in the Royal Navy during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. As a lieutenant, he fought at the Battle of the Nile in 1798 and the Siege of Acre in 1799. Promoted to the rank of commander on 14 February 1801, Brodie is one of two people credited with the command of HMS Arrow at the Battle of Copenhagen in April.
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