HMS Alceste (1806)

The engagement with the French Squadron off Rochefort, HMS Monarch Capt. Richard Lee, engaging La Minerve, L'Armide & La Glore
History
France
NameMinerve
BuilderRochefort
Laid downMay 1804
Launched9 September 1805
CompletedNovember 1805
CapturedBy the British on 25 September 1806
United Kingdom
NameHMS Alceste
AcquiredCaptured on 25 September 1806
CommissionedMarch 1807
ReclassifiedTroopship in 1814
Fate
  • Wrecked on 18 February 1817,
  • wreck then burned on 22 February
General characteristics [1]
Class and type38-gun Armide-class frigate; re-rated as 46 guns in 1817
Tons burthen1,0977194 (bm)
Length
  • 152 ft 5 in (46.5 m) (overall)
  • 128 ft 8 in (39.2 m) (keel)
Beam40 ft (12.2 m)
Draught12 ft 8 in (3.9 m)
PropulsionSails
Sail planFull-rigged ship
Complement284 (later 315)
ArmamentUD: 28 × 18-pounder guns

QD: 14 × 32-pounder carronades

Fc: 2 × 9-pounder guns and 2 × 32-pounder carronades

HMS Alceste was built at Rochefort in 1804 for the French Navy as Minerve, an Armide-class frigate. In the spring of 1806, prior to her capture, she engaged HMS Pallas, then under Lord Cochrane. During the duel she ran aground but Cochrane had to abort his attack when French reinforcements appeared.

The British captured her in an action on 25 September 1806, and the Royal Navy took Minerve into service as Alceste in March 1807; Alceste then continued to serve throughout the Napoleonic Wars. On 29 November 1811, Alceste led a British squadron that captured a French military convoy carrying more than 200 cannon to Trieste in the Balkans. After this loss, Napoleon changed the direction of his planned eastward expansion in 1812 from the Balkans to Russia. The British historian James Henderson has suggested that the two events were linked, and may have changed the course of the war.

In 1814, Alceste was converted to a troopship and used to transport British soldiers to North America during the War of 1812. Following the Treaty of Paris in 1815, Alceste carried Lord Amherst on his 1816 diplomatic mission to China. On the return journey, she struck a reef in the Java Sea; her wreck was subsequently plundered and burned by Malayan pirates.

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