HMS Amelia (1796)

HMS "Amelia" Chasing the French Frigate "Aréthuse" 1813. Painted in 1852 by John Christian Schetky
History
France
Name:	Proserpine
Builder:	Brest, France
Laid down:	December 1784
Launched:	25 June 1785
Commissioned:	August 1785
Fate:	Captured by the Royal Navy on 13 June 1796
United Kingdom
Acquired:	13 June 1796 by capture
Renamed:	Renamed HMS Amelia on capture
Honors and awards:	Naval General Service Medal with clasps: "12th October 1798" "29 Aug. Boat Service 1800"
Fate:	Broken up in December 1816
General characteristics
Class and type:	Hébé-class frigate
Tons burthen:	1,059 35⁄94 (bm)
Length:	151 ft 4 in (46.1 m) (overall); 126 ft 1 3⁄8 in (38.4 m)
Beam:	39 ft 8 7⁄8 in (12.1 m)
Depth of hold:	12 ft 6 1⁄2 in (3.8 m)
Sail plan:	Full-rigged ship
Complement:	French service: 325 British service:284 (later 315)
Armament:	In French Navy service: 1785-93: 26 × 18-pounder guns + 8 × 8-pounder guns 1793-96: 26 × 18-pounder guns + 12 × 9-pounder guns + 4 × 36-pounder howitzers or 32-pounder carronades (when captured) In Royal Navy service: Upper Deck: 28 × 18-pounder guns QD: 8 × 9-pounder guns + 4 × 24-pounder carronades Fc: 9-pounder guns + 2 × 24-pounder carronades (By 1810 the guns had been removed from the quarterdeck and only two 9-pounders remained on the forecastle.)

Proserpine was a 38-gun Hébé-class frigate of the French Navy launched in 1785 that HMS Dryad captured on 13 June 1796. The Admiralty commissioned Proserpine into the Royal Navy as the fifth rate, HMS Amelia. She spent 20 years in the Royal Navy, participating in numerous actions in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, capturing a number of prizes, and serving on anti-smuggling and anti-slavery patrols. Her most notable action was her intense and bloody, but inconclusive, fight with Aréthuse in 1813. Amelia was broken up in December 1816.

Proserpine was a Hébé-class frigate built for the French Navy of the Ancien Régime in Brest. Jacques-Noël Sané designed her as well as five sister ships and she was rated for thirty-eight guns.

Proserpine was stationed at Saint Domingue from 1786 until 1788. In 1792, she was under Ensign Van Stabel. From 1793, she served as a commerce raider under Captain Jean-Baptiste Perrée, notably capturing the 32-gun Dutch frigate Vigilante and several merchantmen of a convoy that Vigilante was escorting.

On 23 June 1795, under Captain Daugier, Proserpine took part in the Battle of Groix as the flagship of Admiral Villaret de Joyeuse. She unsuccessfully attempted to regroup the French fleet, almost colliding with the Droits de l'Homme in the process. Proserpine then fired a broadside at the approaching British fleet before she escaped.

Almost a year later, on 13 June 1796, about 12 leagues south of Cape Clear, Ireland, the frigate Dryad, under the command of Captain Lord Amelius Beauclerk, captured Proserpine following a relatively brief chase but a bitter action. In the engagement, Proserpine, under the command of Citizen Pevrieu, lost 30 men killed and 45 wounded out of her crew of 348 men. Dryad had two men killed and seven wounded. In 1847 the Admiralty awarded the Naval General Service Medal with clasp "Dryad 13 June 1796" to all surviving claimants from the action.