HMS Amethyst (1799)
Capture of the Thétis by HMS Amethyst on 10 November 1808, by Thomas Whitcombe
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 UK
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| Name: | HMS Amethyst |
| Builder: | Deptford Dockyard |
| Launched: | 24 April 1799 |
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| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | Penelope-class frigate |
| Tons burthen: | 1045 48⁄94 (bm) |
| Length: | 150 ft (45.7 m) (overall); 125 ft 5 3⁄8 in (38.237 m) (keel) |
| Beam: | 39 ft 7 in (12.1 m) |
| Depth of hold: | 13 ft 0 in (4.0 m) |
| Sail plan: | Full-rigged ship |
| Complement: | 274 |
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HMS Amethyst was a Royal Navy 36-gun Penelope-class fifth-rate frigate, launched in 1799 at Deptford. Amethyst served in the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars, capturing several prizes. She also participated in two boat actions and two ship actions that won her crew clasps to the Naval General Service Medal. She was broken up in 1811 after suffering severe damage in a storm.
Amethyst was commissioned in May 1799 under the command of Captain John Cooke. She then operated on the Dutch coast later that year. During the Anglo-Russian Invasion of Holland, Amethyst conveyed the Duke of York to the Netherlands and later participated in the evacuation of the force following the campaign's collapse.
On 18 December she and Beaulieu recaptured the brig Jenny. Eleven days after that, Amethyst and Beaulieu recaptured the ships Dauphin, Cato, Cabrus, and Nymphe.
On 29 December Amethyst captured the French privateer brig Aventurier (or Avanture). Aventurier, out of Lorient, was armed with 14 guns and had a crew of 75 men. One month earlier, on 29 November, Aventurier had captured the American ship Cato and taken her master, John Parker, and his crew prisoner. When Amethyst captured Aventurier Cooke freed the Americans and informed Parker that Cato had been sent to Cork. Cooke sent Aventurier into Plymouth from where Parker and his mate traveled to Cork.
On 7 January 1800, the French armed ship Huzelle (or Ursule), came into Plymouth. She had been carrying passengers from Cayenne, including women and children, when Amethyst captured her. On her way into a British port, the French privateer Providence, of 14 guns and 152 men, had recaptured her and sent her to Bordeaux. However, before she got get there, Beaulieu and Unicorn again captured her and sent her into Plymouth. Huzelle was low on provision with the result that a five-year-old child died while she was in Plymouth Sound; as she anchored at Catwater, M.P. Symonds, the broker for the prize, delivered fresh provisions to Huzelle. Among Huzelle's passengers were a Colonel Molonson of Invalids, and a naturalist, M. Burnelle, with a cabinet of curiosities for the French National Museum at Paris.
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