''Aventurier'' (or ''Avanturier''), was a 16-gun brig of the
French Navy
The French Navy (french: Marine nationale, lit=National Navy), informally , is the maritime arm of the French Armed Forces and one of the five military service branches of France. It is among the largest and most powerful naval forces in t ...
. She was launched in 1793 and the
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against ...
captured her in 1798. The British named her HMS ''Aventurier'' and disposed of her in 1802.
French service
''Aventurier'' was built as a privateer to a design by
Jean-Louis Pestel, but the French navy requisitioned her while she was still in the stocks. She was fitted out at
Le Havre
Le Havre (, ; nrf, Lé Hâvre ) is a port city in the Seine-Maritime department in the Normandy region of northern France. It is situated on the right bank of the estuary of the river Seine on the Channel southwest of the Pays de Caux, very ...
in October–November 1793, though there were problems with respect to arming her fully. She then patrolled between Havre and Dieppe, first under captain Fallouard, and then under Lieutenant Harang. From February to June 1795 she escorted convoys between Cherbourg and Brest.
On 10 June 1796, she grounded off Pontusval, near
Brignogan. Refloated, she cruised near the
Île de Batz
The Île de Batz ( br, Enez Vaz) is an island off Roscoff in Brittany, France. Administratively, it is a commune in the Finistère department of Brittany in north-western France.
Climate
Île de Batz has a oceanic climate (Köppen climate class ...
under Lieutenant Hurtel. From January 1797 she cruised out of
Saint Malo
Saint-Malo (, , ; Gallo: ; ) is a historic French port in Ille-et-Vilaine, Brittany, on the English Channel coast.
The walled city had a long history of piracy, earning much wealth from local extortion and overseas adventures. In 1944, the Alli ...
.
Capture
On 4 August 1798 she was under the command of Lieutenant René-Guillaume Raffi (or Raffy) and anchored in the port of Corréjou or Corigiou. Here the boats of and cut her out. British casualties were one man killed, one missing and four wounded. The French casualties were 16 wounded, several mortally. The attack took place at night and in bad weather. To get ''Aventurier'' out of the port took two hours because of the weather conditions and took place under fire from the forts that protected the port. All-in-all, the operation was a daring and arduous one. The subsequent court martial of Lieutenant Raffi, who had been wounded at the start of the attack on his vessel, acquitted him for the loss.
Royal Navy
She was brought into British service as HMS ''Aventurier''. She appears to have had a short, unremarkable career, appearing only once in the ''Naval Chronicle'', when she was reported to have arrived at Plymouth on 27 April 1800, having escorted a convoy.
[''Naval Chronicle'', Vol. 3, p.415.] At the time she was under the command of Lieutenant Birdwood. Nor does she appear in the ''London Gazette''.
[The database of the ]National Maritime Museum
The National Maritime Museum (NMM) is a maritime museum in Greenwich, London. It is part of Royal Museums Greenwich, a network of museums in the Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site. Like other publicly funded national museums in the Unite ...
acknowledges that ''Melpomene'' and ''Childers'' captured an ''Adventurier'', but has no record of an ''Aventurier'', ''Adventurier'', or ''Adventurer''.
Fate
She was deleted from the list of vessels of the Royal Navy in 1802.
Notes, citations, and references
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Aventurier (1793)
Age of Sail corvettes of France
1793 ships
Ships built in France
Gunboats of the Royal Navy
Captured ships