French corvette Bayonnaise (1793)
Gunboar of the French Navy
Bayonnaise was a 24-gun corvette of the French Navy, launched in 1793. She became famous for her capture of HMS Ambuscade on 14 December 1798. Her crew destroyed Bayonnaise in November 1803 to prevent her capture.
Career
Bayonnaise was being built as a privateer when the Ministry of Marine requisitioned her in 1793 before she sailed. The Ministry assumed the construction contracts and purchased her in March 1794.
Bayonnaise participated in the Croisière du Grand Hiver, an unsuccessful sortie by the French fleet at Brest on 24 December 1794.
Her hull was coppered in 1795 in Brest. She was officially renamed Brême that year, but apparently the new name was roundly ignored.
In late 1798, under lieutenant de vaisseau Jean-Baptiste-Edmond Richer, she ferried 120 prisoners from Rochefort to French Guiana. She then ferried troops and dispatches from Cayenne to Guadeloupe, and headed back for France.
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This entry incorporates text from “French corvette Bayonnaise (1793)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.