HMS Mutine (1797)

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

Career (UK)
Name:	HMS Mutine
In service:	Captured in a cutting out action on 29 May 1797
Fate:	Sold in 1807
General characteristics
Class and type:	16-gun brig-sloop
Tons burthen:	349 tons
Length:	104 ft 6 in (31.85 m)
Beam:	28 ft (8.5 m)
Propulsion:	Sails
Armament:	French service: 2 × 36 pdr carronades + 14 × 6 pdrs British service: 16 x 6 pdrs

HMS Mutine was a French 16-gun brig-sloop launched in 1794 at Honfleur. The Royal Navy captured her from the French on 29 May 1797 at the Battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Mutine was sold in 1803.

Capture

Lieutenant Thomas Hardy captured Mutine during the battle for Santa Cruz. (Hardy would later become Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson's flag captain at the Battle of Trafalgar). Hardy led a cutting out action using boats from HMS Minerve and HMS Lively and was able to board and capture the vessel, before sailing her out of the port to the British fleet, under heavy fire from shore and naval guns. Hardy was wounded during the action, along with 14 of the other officers and men involved.

She was subsequently commissioned into the Royal Navy, and Lt. Thomas Hardy was given command of her in August 1797. This was the first ship Hardy would command.

Mediterranean service

Under Hardy, Mutine was present at the Battle of the Nile on the 1 August to 2 August 1798. During the battle, she came to the assistance of HMS Culloden which had run aground, and so did not directly participate in the fighting herself. After the British victory, HMS Leander was sent to carry the dispatches of the battle, but was captured before she could deliver them. Mutine had been sent out on 13 August with a second copy, under the command of Lieutenant Thomas Bladen Capel, and so became the first ship to report the victory, when she arrived at Naples on 3 September. Capel handed over the ship to the 18-year-old William Hoste, with orders from Nelson to provision the ship and then to cruise off the coast between Syracuse and Cape Passaro carrying dispatches. Hoste followed these instructions, and delivered the dispatches to Nelson on 14 September.

Mutine then re-provisioned at Gibraltar before returning to Naples on 15 October. She spent only a day in port, before sailing for Smyrna with dispatches for the Ambassador at Constantinople. She returned from these duties in early 1799, by which time the French had occupied Naples. Mutine was tasked to sail off the coast to keep watch on their activities. She was refitted at Port Mahon in the summer of 1799, and then oversaw the surrender of the French garrison at Civitavecchia in the Autumn.

She was still in the Mediterranean in 1800, sailing under Cmdr. William Hoste. On 29 March she captured the 2-gun privateer Victoire. On 20 August she took the Dangerouse, a Lateen vessel privateer of two guns and four swivelss, sailing from Bastia, bound to Toulon. Then on 2 September she intercepted and captured the French brig Due Fratelli on the same route.

In February 1801 Mutine met the cutter Joseph at Minorca, and the two exchanged dispatches. Mutine’s dispatches included the news that Rear-Admiral Warren's squadron had been following, with the intent to engage, Ganteaume's squadron taking troops to Egypt but they had been separated in a gale off Sardinia. The French had been forced to return to Toulon with three ships of the line dismasted. Mutine took Joseph’s dispatches on to Egypt.

In 1801 she sailed to Trieste, and in 1802, under the command of Lord William FitzRoy, she sailed to Portsmouth, arriving on 4 September and then sailing for Chatham on 9 September to be paid off. She was sold in 1803.

References

• 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. 
• HMS Mutine's career