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
Name	Minerve
Builder	Rochefort
Laid down	May 1804
Launched	9 September 1805
Completed	November 1805
Captured	By the British on 25 September 1806
United Kingdom
Name	HMS Alceste
Acquired	Captured on 25 September 1806
Commissioned	March 1807
Reclassified	Troopship in 1814
Fate	Wrecked on 18 February 1817, wreck then burned on 22 February
General characteristics [1]
Class and type	38-gun Armide-class frigate; re-rated as 46 guns in 1817
Tons burthen	1,09771⁄94 (bm)
Length	152 ft 5 in (46.5 m) (overall) 128 ft 8 in (39.2 m) (keel)
Beam	40 ft (12.2 m)
Draught	12 ft 8 in (3.9 m)
Propulsion	Sails
Sail plan	Full-rigged ship
Complement	284 (later 315)
Armament	UD: 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.