Seine was a 38-gun Seine-class

Seine class frigate

The Seine class was a class of five 42-gun frigates of the French Navy, designed in 1793 by Pierre-Alexandre Forfait. The first four were originally designed to carry a main armament of 24-pounder guns, but in the event were completed at Le Havre with 18-pounders...

 French

French Navy

The French Navy, officially the Marine nationale and often called La Royale is the maritime arm of the French military. It includes a full range of fighting vessels, from patrol boats to a nuclear powered aircraft carrier and 10 nuclear-powered submarines, four of which are capable of launching...

 frigate that the Royal Navy

Royal Navy

The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...

 captured in 1798 and commissioned as the fifth rate HMS Seine. On 20 August 1800, Seine captured the French ship Vengeance

HMS Vengeance (1800)

The Vengeance was a Résistance class frigate of the French Navy, noted for her fight with during the Quasi-War, an inconclusive engagement that left both ships heavily damaged. During the French Revolutionary Wars, hunted Vengeance down and captured her after a sharp action...

 in a single ship action that would win for her crew the Naval General Service Medal. Seine's career ended in 1803 when she hit a sandbank near the Texel

Marsdiep

The Marsdiep is a deep tide-race between Den Helder and Texel in the Netherlands, and running southwards between sandbanks. That gap connects the North Sea and the Waddenzee....

.

French career

Seine was a 40-gun frigate built between May 1793 and March 1794 at Le Havre

Le Havre

Le Havre is a city in the Seine-Maritime department of the Haute-Normandie region in France. It is situated in north-western France, on the right bank of the mouth of the river Seine on the English Channel. Le Havre is the most populous commune in the Haute-Normandie region, although the total...

, having been launched on 19 December 1793. Seines career with the French Navy

French Navy

The French Navy, officially the Marine nationale and often called La Royale is the maritime arm of the French military. It includes a full range of fighting vessels, from patrol boats to a nuclear powered aircraft carrier and 10 nuclear-powered submarines, four of which are capable of launching...

 lasted less than five years.

On 14 July 1794 she and Galathée

French frigate Galathée (1779)

The Galathée was a 32-gun frigate of the French Navy, lead ship of her class.Galathée took part in the Naval operations in the American Revolutionary War, taking part to the capture of Sint Eustatius and to the Battle of the Saintes....

captured the 16-gun sloop-of-war

Sloop-of-war

In the 18th and most of the 19th centuries, a sloop-of-war was a warship with a single gun deck that carried up to eighteen guns. As the rating system covered all vessels with 20 guns and above, this meant that the term sloop-of-war actually encompassed all the unrated combat vessels including the...

  in the Atlantic. In late 1794, L'Hermitte

Jean-Marthe-Adrien l'Hermite

Jean-Marthe-Adrien L'Hermitte was a French sea captain and rear admiral, notable for his involvement in the Glorious First of June and various other campaigns.- Early career :L'Hermitte was born to the family of a...

's squadron sailed for Norway. It comprised the frigates Seine

HMS Seine (1798)

Seine was a 38-gun Seine-class French frigate that the Royal Navy captured in 1798 and commissioned as the fifth rate HMS Seine. On 20 August 1800, Seine captured the French ship Vengeance in a single ship action that would win for her crew the Naval General Service Medal...

, under L'Hermitte, Galathée, under Labutte, and Républicaine, under Le Bozec

Pierre-Marie Le Bozec

Pierre-Marie Le Bozec was a French Navy officer.- Youth :Le Bozec was born to a family of sailors, and started sailing in 1780 on a merchantman...

.

The squadron found itself blocked by cold and damage in a Norwegian harbour during the entire winter of 1794-95, sustaining over 250 dead from illness out of a total complement of 880. In spring, Seine and Galathée returned to France, leaving Républicaine to care for the untransportable sick. They eventually were rescued by the corvette Subtile.

Seine then sailed for Île de France

Mauritius

Mauritius , officially the Republic of Mauritius is an island nation off the southeast coast of the African continent in the southwest Indian Ocean, about east of Madagascar...

, where she joined the squadron under Sercey

Pierre César Charles de Sercey

Pierre César Charles de Sercey was a French admiral, most notable for commanding French naval forces in the Indian Ocean from 1796 to 1800. His name is engraved on the Arc de triomphe.-Early life:...

. In March she sailed from Île de France and was on her way to Lorient

Lorient

Lorient, or L'Orient, is a commune and a seaport in the Morbihan department in Brittany in north-western France.-History:At the beginning of the 17th century, merchants who were trading with India had established warehouses in Port-Louis...

 when she encountered a British frigate squadron in the Breton Passage on 30 June 1798.

and chased her down and captured her. Seine was commanded by Capitaine Brejot and was armed with forty-two 18 and 9-pounder guns. She had a crew of 610 men, including troops.

In the engagement Seine lost 170 men killed and some 100 men wounded, many mortally. Jason had seven men killed and 12 wounded. Pique lost one man killed, six wounded, and one man missing. In the fight Jason, Pique and Seine grounded; Pique was lost, but , which had arrived on the scene, was able to get Seine off. Although the casualties aboard Seine had been high she was not badly damaged and Captain David Milne, who had been captain of Pique, and his crew transferred to her. Her captors sailed her into Portsmouth

Portsmouth

Portsmouth is the second largest city in the ceremonial county of Hampshire on the south coast of England. Portsmouth is notable for being the United Kingdom's only island city; it is located mainly on Portsea Island...

, arriving there on 18 July; Milne commanded Seine for the rest of her career.

British career

Seine was taken into service with the British under an Admiralty

Admiralty

The Admiralty was formerly the authority in the Kingdom of England, and later in the United Kingdom, responsible for the command of the Royal Navy...

 order dated 14 September 1798. She then spent several months fitting out at Portsmouth for the sum of £14,755. She was re-rated as a 38-gun frigate and commissioned in November that year under the command of Milne.

On 13 February 1799 Seine captured Graff Bernstoff. Roughly a month later, on 18 March, Seine and Sea Gull recaptured Industry. That same day, in a probably related encounter, Seine captured the French privateer Hirondelle.

On 20 August 1800 Seine attacked the French ship, , which had just finished refitting at Curaçao

Curaçao

Curaçao is an island in the southern Caribbean Sea, off the Venezuelan coast. The Country of Curaçao , which includes the main island plus the small, uninhabited island of Klein Curaçao , is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands...

. The vessels broke off action and Seine was not able to resume the engagement until 25 August. Then, after an hour and a half of hard fighting, Seine captured the French frigate. Both ships had sustained heavy casualties; 13 crew were killed aboard the Seine, 29 were wounded, and the ship was cut up. However, Vengeance sustained worse; almost cut to pieces, many considered her beyond repair. Nevertheless Vengeance was repaired in Jamaica and taken into British service under her existing name. In 1847 the Admiralty authorized the issue of the Naval General Service Medal with clasp "Seine 20 Augt. 1800" to all surviving claimants from this action.

The naval historian

Maritime history

Maritime history is the study of human activity at sea. It covers a broad thematic element of history that often uses a global approach, although national and regional histories remain predominant...

 William James

William James (naval historian)

William M. James was a British lawyer turned naval historian who wrote important naval histories of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, 1793-1815.-Career:...

 subsequently exaggerated Vengeances earlier engagement with the Constellation

USS Constellation (1797)

USS Constellation was a 38-gun frigate, one of the six original frigates authorized for construction by the Naval Act of 1794. She was distinguished as the first U.S. Navy vessel to put to sea and the first U.S. Navy vessel to engage and defeat an enemy vessel...

 in favour of the French. He declared that as Seine had done what Constellation could not, British naval forces were "more potent than American thunder". That said, Vengeance had been heavily armed with twenty-eight 18-pounder guns (main deck), sixteen 12-pounder guns and eight 42-pounder carronade

Carronade

The carronade was a short smoothbore, cast iron cannon, developed for the Royal Navy by the Carron Company, an ironworks in Falkirk, Scotland, UK. It was used from the 1770s to the 1850s. Its main function was to serve as a powerful, short-range anti-ship and anti-crew weapon...

s (QD and Fc), brass swivel gun

Swivel gun

The term swivel gun usually refers to a small cannon, mounted on a swiveling stand or fork which allows a very wide arc of movement. Another type of firearm referred to as a swivel gun was an early flintlock combination gun with two barrels that rotated along their axes to allow the shooter to...

s on the gunwales, with shifting guns on the main and quarter decks.

By March 1801 Seine was at Jamaica

Jamaica

Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...

, as part of the fleet under Lord Hugh Seymour

Lord Hugh Seymour

Vice-Admiral Lord Hugh Seymour was a senior British Royal Navy officer of the late 18th century who was the fifth son of Francis Seymour-Conway, 1st Marquess of Hertford and became known for being both a prominent society figure and a highly competent naval officer...

.

Fate

Seine underwent a refit at Chatham Dockyard

Chatham Dockyard

Chatham Dockyard, located on the River Medway and of which two-thirds is in Gillingham and one third in Chatham, Kent, England, came into existence at the time when, following the Reformation, relations with the Catholic countries of Europe had worsened, leading to a requirement for additional...

 between June and July 1803, but shortly after her return to service she grounded on a sandbank to the northward of Terschelling

Terschelling

Terschelling is a municipality and an island in the northern Netherlands, one of the West Frisian Islands.Waddenislanders are known for their resourcefulness in using anything and everything that washes ashore. With few trees to use for timber, most of the farms and barns are built with masts...

 on 21 July 1803. That evening Milne had ordered the pilots to keep her out of shallow water and they had assured him that she was safe; forty minutes later she struck. The crew labored all night and well into the morning, with the assistance of two passing merchant vessels to pull her off and to lighten her, but to no avail. At about 11:30am the crew abandoned Seine; they set fire to her as they left to prevent the French recapturing her.

A court martial on 4 August 1803 honourably acquitted Captain Milne, his officers and crew for the loss of the vessel. However, it found the pilots guilt of ignorance. The court martial sentenced them to be mulcted of all their wages for two years and to be imprisoned in the Marshalsea

Marshalsea

The Marshalsea was a prison on the south bank of the River Thames in Southwark, now part of London. From the 14th century until it closed in 1842, it housed men under court martial for crimes at sea, including those accused of "unnatural crimes", political figures and intellectuals accused of...

for two years.