*** Welcome to piglix ***

HMS Babet (1794)

Capture of Engageante Babet and Pomone 131144.JPG
The capture of Engageante, Babet and Pomone, by Thomas Whitcombe
History
French Navy EnsignFrance
Name: Babet
Builder: Pierre Mauger,
Laid down: September 1792
Launched: 12 February 1793
Commissioned: May 1793
Captured: By April 1794
Royal Navy EnsignUK
Name: HMS Babet
Acquired: April 1794 by capture
Honours and
awards:
Naval General Service Medal with clasp "23rd June 1795"
Fate: Lost at sea in October/November 1801
General characteristics
Class and type: 20-gun sixth-rate post ship
Type: Prompte-clas corvette
Displacement: 603 tons (French)
Tons burthen: 511 194 (bm)
Length:
  • 119 ft 1 in (36.3 m) (overall)
  • 91 ft 8 in (27.9 m) (keel)
Beam: 31 ft 1 in (9.5 m)
Depth of hold: 9 ft 4 12 in (2.9 m)
Sail plan: Full-rigged ship
General characteristics (French service)
Complement: some 178 men (c. 200 at capture)
Armament:
  • Originally:20 to 26 × 8-pounder guns
  • Later: 20 or 22 x 6-pounder guns + 4 x 4-pounder guns
  • At capture: 22 x 9-pounder guns
General characteristics (British service)
Complement: 165 men (later 170)
Armament:
  • UD: 20 × 9-pounder guns
  • QD: 6 × 12-pounder carronades
  • Fc: 2 × 12-pounder carronades

HMS Babet was a 20-gun sixth-rate post ship of the British Royal Navy. She had previously been a corvette of the French Navy under the name Babet, until her capture in 1794, during the French Revolutionary Wars. She served with the British, capturing several privateers and other vessels, and was at the Battle of Groix. She disappeared in the Caribbean in 1801, presumably having foundered.

Babet was built at Le Havre, one of a two-ship Prompte class of 20-gun corvettes built to a design by Joseph-Marie-Blaise Coulomb.

In the Bay of Biscay, on 18 May 1793, Captain Andrew Snape Douglas's HMS Phaeton captured her sister, Prompte, which the Royal Navy took into service as HMS Prompte.Babet was laid down in September 1792, fitted out in May 1793 and launched on 12 December 1793.

Her commander from 9 January 1793 to October was lieutenant de vaisseau Rolland. Rolland's replacement on 23 October was enseigne de vaisseau non entretenu Pierre-Joseph-Paul Belhomme.

Babet's French career was brief. Under Belhomme's command she sailed from Havre to Cherbourg via La Hogue. She then cruised the Channel before sailing from Honfleur to Cherbourg, on to Brest, and returning to Cancale. She was part of a squadron consisting of two frigates and another corvette that a British squadron under John Borlase Warren engaged off the Île de Batz in the action of 23 April 1794. HMS Flora and HMS Arethusa captured Babet and brought her into Portsmouth, arriving on 30 April. The action had cost Babet some 30 to 40 of her crew killed and wounded. Flora one man killed and three wounded; Arethusa had three men killed and five wounded.


...
Wikipedia

...