HMS Tigress (1808)
| History | |
|---|---|
 United States
|
|
| Name: | Numa |
| Builder: | Baltimore |
| Launched: | 1801 |
| Renamed: | Pierre Cézar (1808) |
| Captured: | 29 June 1808 |
 UK
|
|
| Name: | HMS Tigress |
| Acquired: | 29 June 1808 by capture |
| Renamed: | HMS Algerine on 21 April 1814 |
| Fate: | Sold on 29 January 1818 for breaking up |
| General characteristics | |
| Tons burthen: | 229 31⁄94 bm |
| Length: |
|
| Beam: | 24 ft 4 in (7.4 m) |
| Depth of hold: | 10 ft 9 in (3.3 m) |
| Propulsion: | Sails |
| Complement: | 50 (British service) |
| Armament: |
|
HMS Tigress was the American merchantman Numa and then French letter of marque Pierre Cézar that the Royal Navy acquired by capture and put into service as the gunbrig Tigress. She spent some time on the West African coast in the suppression of the slave trade. The Admiralty later renamed her as Algerine. She was broken up in 1818.
Tigress was originally launched around 1801 in Baltimore, Maryland, as the Numa. There is a record of her taking a half dozen Irish passengers to the United States in 1803.
Numa sailed in April 1808 from New York for Saint Barthélemy, which was then a Swedish colony, but arrived at Saint-Pierre, Martinique. There French merchants bought her and fitted her out as the letter-of-marque Pierre Cézar (equally Pierre César or Pierre Czar or Pierre Caesar) and armed her with two 6-pounder guns and four 18-pounder carronades, though she was pierced for 18 guns.
On 29 May she sailed from Saint Pierre for L'Orient with a cargo of sugar, coffee, and cotton. One month later, on 29 June, the 40-gun frigate HMS Seine captured her after a four-hour-and-twenty-minute chase off the Spanish coast. Pierre Cézar was a fast sailer and her American mate claimed that the frigate would not have caught her had she not been overloaded.Comet, Unicorn and Cossack shared in the capture.
The Admiralty bought Pierre Cézar for almost £2266 and took her into service as Tigress, her predecessor Tigress having been lost earlier that year to the Danes, who captured her near Agerso in the Great Belt. The Navy fitted out Tigress at Plymouth, arming her with fourteen 12-pounder carronades and commissioning her in October 1808 under Lieutenant Robert Bones.
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Wikipedia