HMS Trimmer (1782)
| History | |
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.svg){kind=small} France
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| Name: | Anti-Briton |
| Builder: | Dunkirk (probably) |
| Launched: | c.1781 |
| Captured: | 1782 |
 United Kingdom
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| Name: | HMS Trimmer |
| Acquired: | January 1782 |
| Fate: | sold 1801 |
| General characteristics | |
| Type: | Brig-sloop |
| Tons burthen: |
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| Length: |
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| Beam: | 24 ft 4 7⁄8 in (7.4 m) |
| Depth of hold: | 10 ft 9 3⁄4 in (3.3 m) |
| Complement: |
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| Armament: |
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HMS Trimmer was the French privateer cutter Anti-Briton, which HMS Stag captured in January 1782 and which the Royal Navy took into service. Early in the French Revolutionary Wars Trimmer captured a privateer. Though she never sailed again after December 1793, the Navy converted her to a temporary fire ship in 1798. The Admiralty sold her in 1801.
Anti-Briton was commissioned at Dunkirk. From 1781 she was under the command of Captain John Kelly, who went under the alias of Jean Grumlé.
On 4 January 1782, Stag under the command of Captain Robert Palliser Cooper, captured Anti-Briton, which was under the command of John Kelly. Cooper had received intelligence that a privateer cutter had taken several vessels in the channel between Ireland and Britain. As soon as the weather permitted, Cooper set sail and was fortunate enough to encounter and capture her. Cooper reported that he took great pleasure in capturing her as she was quite new and had done a great deal of mischief. Kelly had captured the cutter Hope in August 1781.
Cooper brought Anti-Briton into Dublin. There it was discovered that she had been fitted out in Dunkirk and that almost all her crew were English or Irish. These men were incarcerated at Newgate Prison as traitors. Kelly was a native of Rush, but held a commission as a lieutenant in the French navy. He had reportedly captured some 170 vessels that he had destroyed or ransomed for large prices. Kelly would ensure that he received the ransom money by holding sufficient hostages until the bills drawn for the ransom were paid. (When Stag captured Anti-Briton, there were reportedly twelve hostages aboard representing some £60,000 in ransom money.) Kelly had been a smuggler; in later life he ended up a porter on the quay at Bordeaux.
Although there is a great deal of ambiguity about how many crew were abroad Anti-Briton, ultimately the authorities determined that 36 men were French. These the British treated as prisoners-of-war and incarcerated at Kilkenny. Sixty men the authorities deemed traitors. However, the men never came to trial as Stag had delivered them to Dublin, not Britain, and legal opinion was that an Admiralty court there would not have jurisdiction, and a British court would not convict them. The men were released in 1783 after the end of the war with France.
Before her capture, Anti-Briton had captured Sally, Durham, master, which had been sailing from Leverpool to Cork. Sally was forced on shore at Barnstable. Her cargo was mostly saved but it was feared that Sally herself was destroyed/
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Wikipedia