French frigate Caroline

Hortense, sister-ship of Caroline
History
France
Name:	Caroline
Namesake:	Caroline Bonaparte
Ordered:	24 April 1804
Builder:	Antwerp shipyard (Constructeur: Anne-Jean-Louis Leharivel-Durocher) to plans by Sané
Laid down:	May 1804
Launched:	15 August 1806
Captured:	21 September 1809
United Kingdom
Name:	Bourbonaise
Acquired:	21 September 1809
Fate:	Sold in 1817
General characteristics
Displacement:	1,390 tons (French)
Tons burthen:	1,078  10⁄94 (bm)
Length:	151 ft 6 in (46.18 m) (overall) 127 ft 4 7⁄8 in (38.833 m) (keel)
Beam:	39 ft 10 5⁄8 in (12.157 m)
Depth of hold:	12 ft 2 in (3.71 m)
Complement:	French service:360 British service: 300 (later 315)
Armament:	At capture UD: 28 x long 18-pounder guns Spar deck: 10 x long 8-pounder guns + 8 x 36-pounder carronades British service UD:28 x 18-pounder guns QD: 14 x 32-pounder carronades Fc:2 x 9-pounder guns + 2 x 32-pounder carronades
Armour:	Timber

Caroline was a 40-gun Hortense-class frigate of the French Navy. She was launched in 1806, sent to the Indian Ocean in 1809, where she was captured by the British during the Napoleonic Wars. The British renamed the ship to HMS Bourbonaise, as the capture was near Île Bourbon during the British campaign to seize that island and Mauritius, and the British had a ship in service named Caroline.

On 30 November 1807 Caroline captured Charlotte, which Caroline set afire and sank. A week later, on 6 December, Caroline captured the privateer Caesar, which she also set on fire and sank. Caesar was a brig of 217 tons (bm), armed with fourteen 6-pounders and two 18-pounder carronades. Her master, Robert Harrison, had received his letter of marque on 1 January 1807.Caesar had already captured several vessels.

On 12 November 1808, the French authorities sent four new 40-gun frigates to the Indian Ocean. One of them was Caroline, under the command of Captain Jean-Baptiste Billard, Caroline sailed from Vlissingen in the Netherlands.

Caroline initially patrolled with Manche and Iéna under capitaine de vaisseau Billard. Manche was under the command of Captain Breton and was another of the four; she had sailed from Cherbourg.

Caroline captured several ships, notably the two 20-gun East Indiamen Streatham and Europa on 3 May 1809, before returning to Saint-Paul. A third East Indiaman, Lord Keith, escaped. Prize crews took Streatham and Europa to Réunion, where the British recaptured them on 21 September.

Billard suffering from very serious illness, Caroline was under the command of his first mate lieutenant de vaisseau Feretier when, on 21 September, HMS Sirius and HMS Raisonnable captured her during the British Raid on Saint-Paul.