French corvette Bacchante (1795)
| History | |
|---|---|
 France
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| Name: | Bacchante |
| Builder: | Pierre, Jacques, & Nicolas Fortier, Honfleur |
| Laid down: | October 1794 |
| Launched: | 29 December 1795 |
| Completed: | 1796 |
| Captured: | June 1803 |
 UK
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| Name: | HMS Bachante |
| Acquired: | June 1803 by capture |
| Fate: | sold 1809 |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | Serpente-class corvette |
| Tonnage: | 642 (exact) (bm) |
| Length: |
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| Beam: | 32 ft 10 1⁄5 in (10.0 m) |
| Depth of hold: | 14 ft 8 3⁄4 in (4.489 m) |
| Complement: |
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| Armament: |
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The French corvette Bacchante was launched in 1795 as the second of the four-vessel Serpente class of corvettes. She served for almost two years as a privateer, before returning to the service of the French Navy. After HMS Endymion captured her in 1803, the Royal Navy took her in under her existing name as a 20-gun post ship. Bachante served in the West Indies, where she captured several armed Spanish and French vessels before the Navy sold her in 1809.
Bacchante was built to a design by Charles-Henri Tellier. She was a "flat-bottomed vessel, destined to protect the entrances to rivers".
Between 1797 and 1798 Bacchante served as a privateer under Captain Pierre Lefortier.
By 1801 Bacchante was back in naval service and at Havre under the command of lieutenant de vaisseau Bellenger. At the outbreak of war after the collapse of the Treaty of Amiens, Bacchante came under the command of lieutenant de vaisseau François-Louis Kerimel.
On 25 June 1803 Endymion captured Bacchante near the Azores after a chase of eight hours.Bacchante was returning to Brest after a three-month voyage to San Domingo. Kerimel's attempts to escape resulted in Bacchante losing eight men killed and nine wounded; her return fire caused no casualties on Endymion. Captain Charles Paget of Endymion described Bacchante as a "remarkably fine Ship, of large Dimensions, quite New, and sails very fast."
Bacchante arrived at Plymouth on 23 July 1803. She then remained there undergoing fitting between October 1803 and February 1804. Captain Charles Dashwood commissioned Bacchante in November 1803. On 18 February Bacchante was at Plymouth under orders to proceed station herself off Falmouth to meet the Lisbon and Oporto convoys and escort them to their ports.
Dashwood then sailed her for Jamaica in June 1804.
On 3 April 1805, Bacchante captured the Spanish naval schooner Elizabeth of ten guns and 47 men under the command of Don Josef Fer Fexegron. Elizabeth had been carrying dispatches from the Spanish governor of Pensacola, but had thrown these overboard before her capture.
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Wikipedia