In July 1778, Medea started to cruise in the North Sea and the Channel. Off Cape Finisterre on 20 October 1778, being in company with the ship-of-the-lineJupiter under Captain Francis Reynolds, she met Triton under Captain Comte de Ligondès, but Medea got so badly damaged that she was forced to break off the action with the loss of one man killed and three wounded. She later, with HM hired armed shipCountess of Scarborough, shared in the capture, on 17 June 1779, of the French privateers Compte de Maurepas and Duc de la Vauguyon.[1]Medea captured Duc de la Vauguyon (or Duc de Lavaugnon) of Dunkirk, a cutter of 14 guns and 98 men, after a fight of an hour. The fight cost the French four men killed and ten wounded; Medea had no casualties. The Royal Navy took her into service under the name Duc de la Vauginon or Duc de la Vaugignon.
Duc de la Vauguyon had captured and ransomed a lobster smack sailing from Norway to Britain. The master of the smack informed Captain James Montagu (Royal Navy officer) of Medea that the privateer had had a consort. Medea's rigging was too cut up for her to pursue the consort, so Montague sent Countess of Scarborough, Captain Thomas Piercy, after her. Piercy caught up with Compte de Maurepas, of Dunkirk, after a few hours and the privateer struck without resistance. She was armed with fourteen 4-pounder guns and had a crew of 87 men.[2]
On 5 May 1781 Medea assisted Roebuck in the capture off Sandy Hook of Protector, a 28-gun frigate of the Massachusetts State Navy.[3] The prisoners were taken off to the prison hulk Jersey.[4]
On 7 September 1781 Medea captured Belisarius, "a fast sailing frigate of 26 guns and 147 men, belonging to Salem". Medea captured her off the Delaware River. Amphitrite and Savage shared in the capture.[5] The Royal Navy took her into service as the sixth rate HMS Bellisarius, but then sold her in 1783, after the end of the war.
Medea made a number of other captures in summer 1781. These included the ship Phoenix (1 June), the ship Rover (20 June), the schooner Neptune (30 July; with Amphitrite and General Monk), and the brig Marianne (13 August).[5]
From October 1781 to January 1784 Medea was commanded by Captain Erasmus Gower serving in the final stages of the American War of Independence being fought in India. Sailing in company with HMSSceptre(1781) 64 guns near the Cape of Good Hope Medea captured a rich French store ship, La Concorde, after a brief engagement. After reaching Madagascar, Gower was forced to use Medea to tow his prize all the way to Madras, taking two months. Medea then came under the command of Vice-Admiral Sir Edward Hughes.[6]
On 15 January 1783 Medea captured the French corvette Chasseur, carrying dispatches that revealed that the French fleet under Admiral Pierre André de Suffren had returned to the Coromandel coast while Vice-Admiral Hughes was still refitting at Bombay. Chasseur had been the British sloop HMS Chaser (1778 ship), captured by the French on 14 February 1782, and was now sent to Bombay under the command of Medea's Lieutenant Thomas Campbell to advise Admiral Hughes.[7]
Ten days later Medea cut out and captured a large Dutch ship – Vrijheid – from Cuddalore road after taking fire from a fort on the beach and the enemy ship. The Honorable East India Company (HEIC) offered Captain Gower a fortune for the hull and furniture of Vrijheid but he refused to sell, intending to have the ship converted to a 64 gun warship in the Royal Navy. Some months later the ship was lost in the surf at Madras while under attack by a French squadron.[8]
When rumours of preliminary peace negotiations in Europe reached India in June 1783, Captain Gower was instructed to remove his guns from Medea and proceed under a flag of truce to Cuddalore to negotiate a cease fire with Marquis de Bussy-Castelnau and Admiral Suffren. Hostilities were soon concluded and it is probable this was the very last military action of the American War of Independence.[9]
Captain Gower then sailed in Medea with dispatches for the Admiralty and, despite being dis-masted near the Azores, Medea returned to Spithead in only four months, where she was paid off in February 1784.[10]
John Elliot was a Scottish officer of the Royal Navy who served during the Seven Years' War and the American War of Independence. He rose to the rank of admiral, and served briefly as colonial governor of Newfoundland.
HMS Coventry was a 28-gun sixth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy, launched in 1757 and in active service as a privateer hunter during the Seven Years' War, and as part of the British fleet in India during the Anglo-French War. After seventeen years' in British service she was captured by the French in 1783, off Ganjam in the Bay of Bengal. Thereafter she spent two years as part of the French Navy until January 1785 when she was removed from service at the port of Brest. She was broken up in 1786.
The Foudroyant was an 80-gun ship of the line of the French Navy. She was later captured and served in the Royal Navy as the Third Rate HMS Foudroyant.
Surveillante was an Iphigénie-class 32-gun frigate of the French Navy. She took part in the Naval operations in the American Revolutionary War, where she became famous for her battle with HMS Quebec; in 1783, she brought the news that the war was over to America. She later took part in the French Revolutionary Wars, and was eventually scuttled during the Expédition d'Irlande after sustaining severe damage in a storm. The wreck was found in 1979 and is now a memorial.
Bellone was an Iphigénie-class 32-gun frigate of the French Navy on plans by Léon-Michel Guignace. She took part in the American Revolutionary War in the Indian Ocean with the squadron under Suffren, and later in the French Revolutionary Wars. She was present at the Glorious First of June.
HMS Amphitrite was a 24-gun Porcupine-class sixth-rate post ship of the Royal Navy. She served during the American Revolution primarily in the economic war. On the one hand she protected the trade by capturing or assisting at the capture of a number of privateers, some of which the Royal Navy then took into service. On the other hand, she also captured many American merchant vessels, most of them small. Amphitrite was wrecked early in 1794.
Admiral comte Pierre André de Suffren de Saint Tropez, bailli de Suffren, Château de Saint-Cannat) was a French Navy officer and admiral. Beginning his career during the War of the Austrian Succession, he fought in the Seven Years' War, where he was taken prisoner at the Battle of Lagos. Promoted to captain in 1772, he was one of the aids of Admiral d'Estaing during the Naval battles of the American Revolutionary War, notably taking part in the Siege of Savannah.
Concorde was a 32-gun frigate of the French Navy, lead ship of her class. Built in Rochefort in 1777, she entered service with the French early in the American War of Independence and was soon in action, capturing HMS Minerva in the West Indies. She survived almost until near the end of the war when HMS Magnificent captured her in 1783. Not immediately brought into service due to the draw-down in the navy after the end of the war, Concorde underwent repairs and returned to active service with the outbreak of war with France in 1793 as the fifth-rate HMS Concorde.
HMS Monsieur was the former 40-gun French privateer Monsieur, built at Le Havre between July 1778 and 1779, then armed at Granville. The Royal Navy captured her in 1780 and subsequently put her into service as a 36-gun Fifth Rate. This frigate was sold in 1783.
HMS Prince William was a 64-gun third-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy. She had previously been Guipuzcoano, an armed 64-gun ship of the Spanish (Basque) mercantile Guipuzcoan Company of Caracas. She was also known by the religious name of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción.
HMS Surprise was a 28-gun Enterprise-class sixth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy, which served throughout the American Revolutionary War and was broken up in 1783.
HMS Pomona was a 28-gun Enterprise-class sixth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy. Pomona was first commissioned in September 1778 under the command of Captain William Waldegrave.
HMS Minerva was one of the four 32-gun Southampton-class fifth-rate frigates of the Royal Navy. She was launched in 1759 and served through the Seven Years' War, but was captured in 1778 during the American Revolutionary War and served as the French Minerve until being recaptured in 1781 and renamed HMS Recovery. She was broken up in 1784.
Countess of Scarborough was launched at Whitby in 1777. The Royal Navy hired her as a hired armed ship in 1777. She participated in the capture of two privateers before she and HMS Serapis succumbed to a small American flotilla off Flamborough Head in 1779. She briefly became a French privateer. Her subsequent fate is unknown.
Comte de Maurepas was a common name for French vessels in the 18th century. The name comes from that of the French statesman Jean-Frédéric Phélypeaux, Count of Maurepas.
HMS Duc de la Vaguinon was the French privateer cutter Duc de la Vauguyon, launched in 1779, that the British captured later that same year. The British took her into the Royal Navy, but she was almost immediately lost; her total career lasted only about nine months.
The French brig Duc de Chartres was built between 1779 and 1780 at Le Havre as a 24-gun privateer. As a privateer she captured one British warship before in 1781 the Royal Navy captured her. The Royal Navy took her into service as HMS Duc de Chartres. She then captured several American privateers and armed merchant vessels, and one French naval corvette in a noteworthy single-ship action. The Navy sold Duc de Chartres in 1784.
Protector was a frigate of the Massachusetts Navy, launched in 1779. She fought a notable single-ship action against a British privateer General Duff before the British Royal Navy captured her in 1781. The Royal Navy took her into service as the sixth-rate post ship HMS Hussar. Hussar too engaged in a notable action against the French 32-gun frigate Sybille. The Royal Navy sold Hussar in 1783 and a Dutch ship-owner operating from Copenhagen purchased her. She made one voyage to the East Indies for him before he sold her to British owners circa 1786. She leaves Lloyd's Register by 1790.
Belisarius was launched in Massachusetts in 1781. The British Royal Navy captured later that year and took her into service as HMS Bellisarius. She captured several American privateers, including one in a single ship action, before the Navy sold her in 1783. Her new owners sailed her as a merchantman between London and British Honduras. In 1787 she carried emigrants to Sierra Leone for the Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor, before returning to trading with Honduras. She was wrecked in September 1787.
Chaser was built in the East Indies in 1778. The Royal Navy purchased her in 1781 and commissioned her as HMS Chaser. A French frigate captured her in 1782 but the Royal Navy recaptured her in 1783 and took her back into service. She was present at a major battle and then sailed to England where the Navy sold her in 1784. As the mercantile Chaser she made five or six voyages as a whaler in the British northern whale fishery and then two to the southern whale fishery. On her way home from the second a French privateer captured her, but some of her crew recaptured her. Next, she began trading with Honduras but was wrecked in late 1795 as she was returning from there to London.
References
Bates, Ian M. (2017). Champion of the Quarterdeck: Admiral Sir Erasmus Gower (1742–1814). Pomona, Queensland: Sage Old Books. ISBN978-0-95870-212-6.
Beatson, Robert (1804) Naval and military memoirs of Great Britain, from 1727 to 1783. Vol 4. (Longman, Hurst, Rees and Orme).
Gardiner, Robert (1992) The First Frigates. (London:Conway Maritime Press). ISBN0-85177-601-9.
Lyon, David (1993) The Sailing Navy List. (London:Conway Maritime Press). ISBN0-85177-617-5.
Winfield, Rif (2007). British Warships in the Age of Sail 1714–1792: Design, Construction, Careers and Fates. Seaforth. ISBN978-1844157006.
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