The Diligente was a 20-gun corvette

Corvette

A corvette is a small, maneuverable, lightly armed warship, originally smaller than a frigate and larger than a coastal patrol craft or fast attack craft , although many recent designs resemble frigates in size and role...

 of 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...

, lead ship of her class. Built at Brest on private plans by Pierre Ozanne

Pierre Ozanne

Pierre Ozanne was a French naval artist and engineer, brother of Nicolas Ozanne.- Biography :From 1750, Ozanne was schooled at the Ecole des Gardes de la Marine, ancestor of the École Navale, and in Paris, where he was a pupil of Duhamel du Monceau...

, she was particularly fast. The French Navy adopted the design and copied the plans as late as 1848. Originally armed with 6-pounder guns, she was later rearmed with heavier 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. She continued in service, off and on, until she was struck in 1854.

French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars

Diligente took part in the Atlantic campaign of 1806

Atlantic campaign of 1806

The Atlantic campaign of 1806 was a complicated series of manoeuveres and counter-manoeuveres conducted by squadrons of the French Navy and the British Royal Navy across the Atlantic Ocean during the spring and summer of 1806, as part of the Napoleonic Wars...

 in Leissègues

Corentin Urbain Leissègues

Corentin Urbain de Leissegues was a French admiral of the Napoleonic wars, notably protagonist of the Battle of San Domingo.- Biography :...

' squadron, culminating in the Battle of San Domingo

Battle of San Domingo

The Battle of San Domingo, in 1806, was a naval battle of the Napoleonic Wars. French and British squadrons of ships of the line met off the southern coast of the French-occupied Spanish Colony of Santo Domingo in the Caribbean...

.

In August 1808 Diligente, captained by Commander Jean-François Lemaresquier, with the corvettes Sylphe

French corvette Sylphe (1804)

Sylphe was ar Abeille class 16-gun brig of the French Navy.She took part in Allemand's expedition of 1805 under commander Langlois, capturing the merchantman Brothers...

 and Espiègle

HMS Electra (1808)

HMS Electra was a 16-gun brig-sloop. She was built by the Enterprise Ethéart at as the French Curieux class brig Espiègle and launched in 1804. She was armed in 1807 at Saint Servan....

, sailed from France with supplies for the island of Martinique

Martinique

Martinique is an island in the eastern Caribbean Sea, with a land area of . Like Guadeloupe, it is an overseas region of France, consisting of a single overseas department. To the northwest lies Dominica, to the south St Lucia, and to the southeast Barbados...

. British ships chased them through the Bay of Biscay

Bay of Biscay

The Bay of Biscay is a gulf of the northeast Atlantic Ocean located south of the Celtic Sea. It lies along the western coast of France from Brest south to the Spanish border, and the northern coast of Spain west to Cape Ortegal, and is named in English after the province of Biscay, in the Spanish...

 and captured Sylphe and Espiègle. Diligente however escaped, only off Antigua

Antigua

Antigua , also known as Waladli, is an island in the West Indies, in the Leeward Islands in the Caribbean region, the main island of the country of Antigua and Barbuda. Antigua means "ancient" in Spanish and was named by Christopher Columbus after an icon in Seville Cathedral, Santa Maria de la...

 to encounter the British sloop Recruit

HMS Recruit (1806)

HMS Recruit was an 18-gun Cruizer class brig-sloop of the Royal Navy, launched in 1806 at Sandwich, Kent. She is best known for an act of pique by Cmdr. Warwick Lake, who marooned a seaman, and for an inconclusive but hard fought ship action under Cmdr. Charles John Napier against the French...

, under Commander (later to be Admiral) Charles Napier. During a hard-fought action lasting three hours, Recruits mainmast fell, putting her somewhat at Diligentes mercy. However, a lucky shot ignited Diligentes ammunition store, causing some damage. Diligente withdrew and later her captain justified his action on the grounds that other British naval vessels were approaching, which they weren't, and the weight of Recruits broadside, which was heavier.

On 3 October, Diligente sank the Mexican brig Juliana. Then on 12 November she returned 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...

. Here she served from 1811 to 1812 as a school ship. On 12 March she was in the harbour at Brest. She may have cruised in the Channel as reported that on 20 December 1813 she had retaken and sent in the brig Racehorse, from Newfoundland for Teignmouth, that the French corvette Diligente had captured. In 1814 Diligente was paid off.

Bourbon Restoration

After the Bourbon Restoration

Bourbon Restoration

The Bourbon Restoration is the name given to the period following the successive events of the French Revolution , the end of the First Republic , and then the forcible end of the First French Empire under Napoleon  – when a coalition of European powers restored by arms the monarchy to the...

, Diligente underwent refitting at Brest between 22 August 1820 and 4 January 1821. She was rearmed with 18-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 and was reclassified as a corvette aviso (sloop

Sloop

A sloop is a sail boat with a fore-and-aft rig and a single mast farther forward than the mast of a cutter....

 corvette). Then on 21 April she left Brest for the Antilles, Guiana

French Guiana

French Guiana is an overseas region of France, consisting of a single overseas department located on the northern Atlantic coast of South America. It has borders with two nations, Brazil to the east and south, and Suriname to the west...

 and Newfoundland. By 30 August 1822 she was in the Antilles again.

On 2 November 1822 she left Rochefort for Brazil, not returning to Brest until 27 December 1826. Around 1825 or so she was off the coast of Chile where she took a privateer that had fired a broadside at her.

In 1827 she was again disarmed for refitting. Then in 1828 she was in the Eastern Mediterranean.

July Monarchy

Under Commandant Garibou she took part in the expedition to the mouth of the Tagus

Tagus

The Tagus is the longest river on the Iberian Peninsula. It is long, in Spain, along the border between Portugal and Spain and in Portugal, where it empties into the Atlantic Ocean at Lisbon. It drains an area of . The Tagus is highly utilized for most of its course...

 River where a French squadron fought the Battle of the Tagus on 11 July 1831. The French vessels fought their way past the Portuguese forts guarding the mouth of the river and sailed up to Lisbon. There they forced the Portuguese king Dom Miguel

Miguel of Portugal

Dom Miguel I, sometimes Michael , was the King of Portugal between 1828 and 1834, the seventh child and second son of King John VI and his queen, Charlotte of Spain....

 to accede to French demands, among them that he recognize the July Monarchy

July Monarchy

The July Monarchy , officially the Kingdom of France , was a period of liberal constitutional monarchy in France under King Louis-Philippe starting with the July Revolution of 1830 and ending with the Revolution of 1848...

. The French also seized all the military and commercial vessels they could find as reparations.

Then in 1835-36 she was on the Livorno

Livorno

Livorno , traditionally Leghorn , is a port city on the Tyrrhenian Sea on the western edge of Tuscany, Italy. It is the capital of the Province of Livorno, having a population of approximately 160,000 residents in 2009.- History :...

 station. On 26 October 1840 she left Toulon for Alexandria, Egypt. She was in Smyrna in March 1841. Lastly, she was present at Athens during the 3 September 1843 Revolution.