page_title: HMS Hydra (1797)
section_title: Napoleonic Wars
hierarchical_section_title: HMS Hydra (1797) / Napoleonic Wars
caption_attribution_description: English: oil on canvas on board; 460 x 600 mm In the right foreground is the Hydra, in port-bow view, sailing close-hauled on the starboard tack. In the left middle distance is the Furet, also port-bow view, firing a gun at the Hydra while her main top-gallant mast is falling. George Chambers senior (1803-40), painted another version of this action for Mundy in 1832, with a pair to it of Hydra at Cape Bagur in 1807 (see also BHC0577). The Chambers pictures were subsequently lithographed by Paul Gauci but that of the Furet action (NMM PAG7115) does not relate to this interpretation of it. This painting is apparently the pair to BHC0577, being acquired with it for the Museum by Sir James Caird in 1928 as part of the Macpherson Collection.
context_page_description: HMS Hydra launched in 1797 was a fifth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy, armed with a main battery of twenty-eight 18-pounder guns.
  She was built to the design of the captured French frigate Melpomene.
context_section_description: Under the command of Captain George Mundy, for eight years from October 1802 to September 1810, she had an active career in the Napoleonic Wars, including the Blockade of Cadiz (1805-1806).
  On 24 June 1803 Hydra and His Majesty's hired armed cutter Rose captured the French privateer Phoebe. Phoebe, of four guns, two swivel guns, and 33 men, had left Cherbourg some seven days earlier. The gun-brig HMS Starling recaptured the brigs William, of Sunderland, and Diana, of London, and their cargoes. She also recaptured Egyptian, of Waterford, which had been sailing in ballast. Phoebe had captured them before she herself was captured. Hydra and Starling arrived at Portsmouth on 29 June.
  On 30 January 1804, Hydra and Tribune, operating independently, encountered a French flotilla of 20 vessels off Cape La Hogue, and captured three gun brigs and a lugger. The gun brigs were of 100 tons burthen and new, having been launched only ten days earlier and having been rigged while still in the stocks. They had troops aboard that had embarked the day after the launch. The vessels were from Saint-Malo, sailing to Cherbourg.
  Hydra captured brig No. 51 and lugger no. 411. The brig was armed with three 24-pounder guns and was under the command of a lieutenant de vaisseau. She had 50 men aboard, a lieutenant and 26 of whom were from the 32nd Regiment of the Line. The lugger was armed with one 18-pounder, and had 36 men aboard. A lieutenant and 26 of whom were soldiers from the same regiment.
  Fortune captured brigs No. 43 and No. 47. These brigs too had three guns each, one 18 and two 24-pounders. No. 43 had 50 men aboard and No. 47 had 60. The reports of the number of men captured are contradictory. Still, both brigs were carrying troops from the same 32nd Regiment (or Demi-Brigade). Before capturing the two brigs, Tribune had destroyed a large boat. Captain Bennet of Tribune further reported that he had seen a frigate, which he believed was Hydra, capture a lugger and continue in pursuit of a brig.
  Hydra and Tribune shared the proceeds of the prize money and the head money for brigs Nos. 43, 47, and 51, and the lugger No. 411. However, because the two British vessels were there in different capacities, Hydra being part of a squadron under Admiral Sir James Saumarez, commander of Royal Navy forces in the Channel Islands, and Tribune reporting directly to Admiral George Montagu, Commander-in-Chief, Portsmouth, the division of the captains' shares of the prize money was complex.
  Hydra shared with Phoebe in the proceeds from the capture between 9 and 15 November 1804 of the vessels Paulina and Sesostris.
  After Admiral Lord Nelson defeated the Franco-Spanish fleet at the battle of Trafalgar on 21 October 1805, four French frigates and the brig Furet took refuge at Cadiz, where they remained into February 1806. To try to lure them out, Vice-Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood pulled his ships-of-the-line ten leagues out to sea, leaving only Hydra, under Captain George Mundy, and the brig-sloop Moselle in close blockade. On 23 February a strong easterly wind drove the British off their station, which led the French commander, Captain Louis-Charles-Auguste Delamarre de Lamellerie, to seize the opportunity to escape. On the evening of 26 February Hydra and Moselle were three leagues west of the Cadiz lighthouse when they sighted the French vessels. Mundy began firing rockets and alarm guns to alert Collingwood, while sailing parallel to the escaping French squadron. Mundy then sent Carden in Moselle to try to locate the British fleet. On the morning of 27 February Moselle reached Collingwood, who despatched three frigates to try to catch the French.
  In the meantime, Hydra had managed to isolate the French brig from her companions, and after a two-hour chase, captured Furet. The French frigates did not come to their brig's aid, and after firing a pro forma broadside, Furet surrendered. Furet was armed with eighteen long 9-pounder guns, and had a crew of 130 men under the command of lieutenant de vaisseau Demay. She was provisioned for a cruise of five months.
caption: Action Between HMS Hydra and the Furet, 27 February 1806; National Maritime Museum, Greenwich
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