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French frigate Cléopâtre

History
French Navy Ensign French Navy Ensign French Navy EnsignFrance
Name: Cléopâtre
Namesake: Cleopatra
Builder: Saint Malo
Laid down: 1780
Launched: 19 August 1781
Commissioned: December 1781
Fate: Captured by the Royal Navy
Naval Ensign of the United Kingdom.svgUnited Kingdom
Name: Oiseau
Acquired: 19 June 1793 by capture
Fate: Broken up 1816
General characteristics
Class and type: Vénus-class frigate
Displacement: 1,082 tons (French)
Tons burthen: 913 1694 (bm)
Length: 145 ft 7 34 in (44.393 m) (overall);120 ft 8 78 in (36.801 m) (keel)
Beam: 37 ft 8 12 in (11.494 m)
Depth of hold: 11 ft 11 34 in (3.651 m)
Complement: 254 (British service)
Armament:
  • French service:
  • Originally: 18 × 12-pounder + 14 × 6-pounder long guns
  • May 1783-1793:18 x 18-pounder guns vice 12-pounders (Loaded at Trincomalee)
  • 1793:26 x12-pounder guns + 10 x 6-pounder guns
  • British service:
  • Upper deck:26 × 12-pounder guns
  • QD:8 × 24-pounder carronades
  • Fc:2 × 6-pounder guns + 2 × 24-pounder carronades
Armour: Timber

The Cléopâtre was a 32-gun Vénus class frigate of the French Navy. She was designed by Jacques-Noël Sané, and had a coppered hull. She was launched in 1781, but the British captured her in 1793. She then served the Royal Navy as HMS Oiseau until she was broken up in 1816.

She took part in the taking of Cuddalore in 1782.

On 19 June 1793, as she sailed off Guernsey under Lieutenant de vaisseau Mullon, she encountered HMS Nymphe, under Captain Edward Pellew. During the short but sharp action, Cléopâtre lost her mizzenmast and wheel, and the ship, being unmanageable, fell foul of the Nymphe. The British then boarded and captured her in a fierce rush. Mullon, mortally wounded, died while trying to swallow his commission, which, in his dying agony, he had mistaken for the vessel's secret signals. Pellew then sent the signals to the Admiralty.

In the battle Nymphe had 23 men killed and 27 wounded. Pellew estimated the number of French casualties at about 60.

Cléopâtre was the first frigate taken in the war. In 1847 the Admiralty awarded the Naval General Service Medal with clasp "Nymphe 18 June 1793" to the four surviving claimants from the action.

The Royal Navy commissioned her as HMS Oiseau in September 1793 under Captain Robert Murray. On 18 May 1794 he sailed her from Plymouth to Halifax in a squadron commanded by Rear-Admiral George Murray. Between 1793 and 1795, the Russian naval officer Yuri Lisyanski sailed aboard Oiseaux as a volunteer. Between 1803 and 1806 he would captain the Russian-American Company's sloop Neva on the first Russian circumnavigation of the world.


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