HMS Arab (1798)

150px The front page of HMS Arab's logbook, held at The National Archives, Kew
Career (UK)
Name:	HMS Arab
Builder:	Nantes, France
Launched:	c. 1797
Commissioned:	1798
Renamed:	Launched as the French privateer Brave
Captured:	24 April 1798 by HMS Phoenix
Fate:	Sold on 20 September 1810
General characteristics
Class and type:	22-gun sixth rate post ship
Tons burthen:	505 48/94 bm
Length:	109 ft 11 in (33.5 m) (overall) 88 ft 10 in (27.1 m) (keel)
Beam:	32 ft 8.5 in (9.970 m)
Depth of hold:	14 ft 3 in (4.34 m)
Sail plan:	Full-rigged ship
Complement:	155
Armament:	20 x 9pdrs 2 x 32pdr carronades

For other ships of the same name, see HMS Arab.

HMS Arab was a 22-gun sixth-rate post ship of the Royal Navy. Arab was ship-rigged and armed with 9-pounder guns and 32-pounder carronades. She was formerly the 18-gun French privateer Brave, built in Nantes around 1797. Captured on 24 April 1798 by the 36-gun HMS Phoenix, she was taken into British service and served during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, being broken up in 1810.

During her 12-year career she served on three separate stations, and was involved in two international incidents, firstly with the Danes under Captain John Perkins and later under Captain Cochrane with the Americans. She was also used in the capture of two islands, Sint Eustatius and Saba. Under Captains Perkins and Maxwell she took a considerable number of prizes.

French Revolutionary Wars and Treaty of Amiens

After being captured off Cape Clear in April 1798 the privateer Brave was brought to Plymouth, arriving there on 12 May. She was named and registered on 24 July 1798 and fitted out at the dock between November 1798 and April 1799. During this period a lower deck, quarterdeck and a forecastle were added. She was commissioned in December 1798 under Commander Peter Spicer. In February 1799 Captain Thomas Bladen Capel took command, sailing to Jamaica in April that year.

Perkins

Captain John Perkins took command in January 1801. In March 1801 the Arab, in company with the 18-gun British privateer Experiment, caught and challenged two Danish vessels, the schooner Den Aarvaagne and the brig Lougen. Arab fired several broadsides at Lougen before the Danish ship returned fire. Her first shot loosed the bower anchor of the Arab and allowed the Danes to escape into St Thomas. The commander of the Lougen was awarded a presentation sword made of gold, a medal and 400 rix-dollars (a whole year’s salary) by the Danish government for merely managing to escape from Perkins. In response to this Perkins lay outside the harbour for more than two weeks and after having repaired the damage of the battle captured more than a dozen enemy ships. On 13 April 1801 Arab captured the Spanish Privateer El Duenda. On 16 April 1801 Perkins, in company with Colonel Blunt and a detachment of the Buffs (Royal East Kent Regiment), laid siege to and captured the wealthy islands of Saint Eustatius and Saba, capturing their French garrisons, forty-seven cannon and 338 barrels of gunpowder.

Command of Arab passed to Captain Robert Fanshawe in 1802, though she remained in the Leeward Islands. Fanshawe took her back to Plymouth, where she spent between August and December being repaired and refitted. After a brief period spent laid up she was brought back into service with the resumption of war with France.

Napoleonic Wars

Cochrane

Arab was recommissioned in October 1803 under Captain Lord Thomas Cochrane, for service in the North Sea and the Downs. Cochrane had been assigned to Arab by Earl St Vincent. Cochrane referred to his time in the Arab as "naval exile in a dreary tub". Under his command she was twice involved in collisions with Royal Navy ships, firstly with the 12-gun HMS Bloodhound and then with the storeship HMS Abundance. In his autobiography he compared the Arab to a collier, and his first thoughts on seeing Arab being repaired at Plymouth were that she would "sail like a haystack. Despite his misgivings, he still managed to intercept and board an American merchant ship, the Chatham, and create an international incident, leading to the consignment of HMS Arab and her commander to fishing fleet protection duties beyond Orkney in the North Sea, an assignment that Cochrane bitterly complained about.

Maxwell

Cochrane was replaced by Captain Keith Maxwell in 1805, and served with the squadron off Boulogne. On 18 July the French Boulogne flotilla was seen steering along the shore, and Captain Edward Owen ordered his brigs, the 12-gun vessels HMS Watchful, HMS Sparkler, HMS Pincher and Arab to attack the part of the flotilla which consisted of 22 large schooners under Dutch colours. When Captain Maxwell pushed inshore he found the water barely sufficient to keep his ship from running aground on the close packed shoals. Despite the danger the British managed to ground three of the Dutch schooners passing Cap Gris Nez and they struck on the Banc de Laine and forced two others to run themselves ashore. During the action a large shell struck the Arab's main-mast-head and then lodged on the gun deck. A seaman named Clorento started to remove the fuse but a Master's Mate, Edward Mansell, seeing that it was about to explode, helped him and two others push it through a port where it blew up in the water a few seconds later. The Patriotic Fund at Lloyd's voted Mr. Mansell fifty pounds and the three seamen thirty pounds each. Her eight wounded men received 125 pounds between them. The following day Arab was cheered by Owen's ship, the 42-gun HMS Immortalite after burying their dead at sea.

Subsequently Arab was reassigned to the West Indies. During her time there Maxwell was temporarily replaced in an acting capacity by Lieutenant Edward Dix, for a period of five weeks in 1806. During this period almost the entire crew of Arab, with the exception of the captain and eight others, contracted yellow fever and over thirty men died. Maxwell resumed command and returned to Spithead in 1807 where her remaining crew were paid off. Arab was placed in ordinary at Woolwich and was sold at Deptford on 20 September 1810.

Notes

a. ^{^} Spicer had been a lieutenant on HMS Captain under Horatio Nelson at the Battle of Cape St Vincent.

Bibliography

• Colledge, J. J.; Warlow, Ben (2006) [1969]. Ships of the Royal Navy: the complete record of all fighting ships of the Royal Navy (Rev. ed.). London: Chatham. ISBN 9781861762818. OCLC 67375475. 
• Naval History of Great Britain from the Declaration of War by France in 1793 to the Accession of George IV (Six Volumes) by William James
• The Audacious Admiral Cochrane: The True Life of a Naval Legend by Brian Vale
• The Autobiography of a Seaman by Thomas, Earl of Dundonald
• The Royal Navy: v. 3: A History – From the Earliest Times to 1900 by Sir William Laird Clowes
• Cochrane: Britannia's Sea Wolf: The Story of Britannia's Sea Wolf by Donald Thomas

External Links

• HMS Arab;
• Battle of the West Kay 1801, An account of the battle between HMS Arab and the Danish Brig Lougen;
• National Maritime Museum;
• Royal Naval Museum, Portsmouth;