Three ships of 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 F ...

have been named HMS ''Espion'', meaning "spy". A fourth vessel was going to bear the name but was given another name instead: * HMS ''Espion'' was a 16-gun French ''Levrette''-class cutter launched in 1781, captured in 1782 and sold in 1784. * HMS ''Espion'' was the 16-gun French

privateer A privateer is a private person or ship that engages in maritime warfare under a commission of war. Since robbery under arms was a common aspect of seaborne trade, until the early 19th century all merchant ships carried arms. A sovereign or deleg ...

corvette ''Robert'' launched in 1793 at

Nantes Nantes (, , ; Gallo: or ; ) is a city in Loire-Atlantique on the Loire, from the Atlantic coast. The city is the sixth largest in France, with a population of 314,138 in Nantes proper and a metropolitan area of nearly 1 million inhabita ...

. The British captured her in 1793 and named her HMS ''Espion''. The French recaptured her in 1794 and took her into service as ''Espion''. The British recaptured her in 1795, but there being another ''Espion'' in service by then, the British renamed their capture HMS ''Spy''. She served under that name until the Navy sold her in 1801. ''Spy'' then became a

slave ship Slave ships were large cargo ships specially built or converted from the 17th to the 19th century for transporting slaves. Such ships were also known as "Guineamen" because the trade involved human trafficking to and from the Guinea coast ...

, a merchantman to South America, and privateer again. The French captured her in mid-1805 and sent her into Guadeloupe. * HMS ''Espion'' was the French

frigate A frigate () is a type of warship. In different eras, the roles and capabilities of ships classified as frigates have varied somewhat. The name frigate in the 17th to early 18th centuries was given to any full-rigged ship built for speed and ...

''Atalante'', which the British captured in 1794 and later converted to a store or troopship. She was wrecked, with no loss of life, in 1799. * ''Espion'' was the name initially chosen for .

Citations

References

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Espion, Hms Royal Navy ship names