French frigate Cléopâtre (1781)
| History | |
|---|---|
.svg){kind=small}   France
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| Name: | Cléopâtre |
| Namesake: | Cleopatra |
| Builder: | Saint Malo |
| Laid down: | 1780 |
| Launched: | 19 August 1781 |
| Commissioned: | December 1781 |
| Fate: | Captured by the Royal Navy |
 United Kingdom
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| 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 16⁄94 (bm) |
| Length: | 145 ft 7 3⁄4 in (44.393 m) (overall);120 ft 8 7⁄8 in (36.801 m) (keel) |
| Beam: | 37 ft 8 1⁄2 in (11.494 m) |
| Depth of hold: | 11 ft 11 3⁄4 in (3.651 m) |
| Complement: | 254 (British service) |
| Armament: |
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| Armour: | Timber |
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, and the British captured her in 1793. She then served the Royal Navy as HMS Oiseau until she was broken up in 1816.
Cléopâtre 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 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 French 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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Wikipedia