Lynx was a 16-gun brig 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...

, launched at Bayonne on 17 April 1804, and commissioned in June under Lieutenant Fargenel. The British captured her in 1807 and named her HMS Heureux. After service in the Caribbean that earned her crew two medals, including one for a boat action in which her captain was killed, she was laid up in 1810 and sold in 1814.

French service

She took part in the Trafalgar Campaign

Trafalgar Campaign

The Trafalgar Campaign was a long and complicated series of fleet manoeuvres carried out by the combined French and Spanish fleets; and the opposing moves of the Royal Navy during much of 1805. These were the culmination of French plans to force a passage through the English Channel, and so achieve...

, ferrying dispatches between Fort de France and France, where she arrived on 10 July 1805.

She was then attached to a five-frigate squadron under Commodore Eleonore-Jean-Nicolas Soleil

Éléonore-Jean-Nicolas Soleil

Éléonore-Jean-Nicolas Soleil was a French Navy officer and captain.- Biography :Born to the family of a surgeon, Soleil started sailing on a merchantman in 1783. In 1785, he served in the French Royal Navy on a fluyt, before returning to merchant shipping.In August 1789, Soleil joined up as a...

, tasked with ferrying supplies and troops to the French West Indies

French West Indies

The term French West Indies or French Antilles refers to the seven territories currently under French sovereignty in the Antilles islands of the Caribbean: the two overseas departments of Guadeloupe and Martinique, the two overseas collectivities of Saint Martin and Saint Barthélemy, plus...

. A British squadron intercepted the convoy, which led to the Action of 25 September 1806

Action of 25 September 1806

The Action of 25 September 1806 was a naval battle fought during the Napoleonic Wars off the French Biscay port of Rochefort. A French convoy of five frigates and two corvettes, sailing to the French West Indies with supplies and reinforcements, was intercepted by a British squadron of six ships of...

, where the British captured four of the frigates. Lynx, the frigate Thétis

French frigate Thétis (1788)

Thétis was a 40-gun Nymphe-class frigate frigate of the French Navy.From 1790, she served in various diplomatic missions in the Indian Ocean, before returning for a refit in Brest in 1793. From 1795, she was shuttled from France to Guadeloupe...

 and the corvette 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...

 escaped, with Lynx managing to outrun HMS Windsor Castle

HMS Windsor Castle (1790)

HMS Windsor Castle was a 98-gun second rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, launched on 3 May 1790 at Deptford Dockyard.-Dardanelles:Windsor Castle was part of Robert Calder's fleet at the Battle of Cape Finisterre in 1805...

. Lynx finally arrived in Martinique on 31 October.

Capture

The boats of , under Lieutenant William Coombe, captured Lynx off Les Saintes on 21 January 1807. The boats, manned with five officers, 50 seamen and 20 marines, had to row for eight hours, mainly in the blazing sun, to catch her. During the action Coombe, who had already lost a leg in a previous action, received a musket ball through the thigh above the previous amputation. The British only succeeded in boarding Lynx on their third attempt and a desperate struggle occurred on deck as the crew of the Lynx outnumbered their attackers. The British lost nine men killed and 22 wounded, including Coombe. The French had 14 killed and 20 wounded, including the captain.

The Patriotic Society awarded Coombe and several of the other British officers swords worth 50 guineas, but Coombe did not live to receive it. The surviving officers were promoted; Coombe was promoted to commander but appointed as captain of , not Lynx. Hart was a lesser vessel than Lynx and Coombe complained to the admiral of the station and then to the Admiralty. The Admiralty reversed the appointments, which led to Coombe fighting a duel with the relegated captain. In 1847 the Admiralty issued the Naval General Service Medal with clasp "21 Jan. Boat Service 1807" to all surviving claimants of the action.

The British took Lynx into service as HMS Heureux as the Royal Navy already had a , and had lost an the year before.

British service

Heureux was commissioned in Antigua in April 1807 under Coombe, who was killed in the early morning of 29 November 1808. He had received information that seven French vessels were lying under the protection of two batteries in the harbour at Mahaut

Baie-Mahault

Baie-Mahault is the second most populated commune in the French overseas region and department of Guadeloupe after Abymes The extensive Zoning Industriel of Jarry, in Baie-Mahault is far the most industrialized communes in the islands and the largest industrial park in the Lesser Antilles.It is...

, Guadeloupe

Guadeloupe

Guadeloupe is an archipelago located in the Leeward Islands, in the Lesser Antilles, with a land area of 1,628 square kilometres and a population of 400,000. It is the first overseas region of France, consisting of a single overseas department. As with the other overseas departments, Guadeloupe...

 and decided to attack them.

Coombe took three boats and 63 men who rowed six hours to reach Mahaut at about midnight. The cutting out party then waited for four hours at their oars until just after the moon set at 4 am on 29 November. Coombe, with 19 men, boarded and carried a schooner armed with two guns and with a crew of 39 men. After a few minutes of desperate fighting the attackers prevailed. Meanwhile Lieutenant Daniel Lawrence and the remainder of the party landed and spiked three 24-pounders in the batteries, before boarding a brig. On the way out the prizes grounded, making the ideal targets for small arms fire and the three field pieces that the French had brought down to the shore. A 24-pound shot struck Coombe on the left side as he was about to abandon the prizes, killing him almost immediately. A musket ball wounded Lawrence in the forearm. Still, he extricated all the men without further casualties. In 1847 the Admiralty issued the Naval General Service Medal with clasp "28 Nov. Boat Service 1808" to all surviving claimants of the action.

Commander John Ellis Watt replaced Coombe. Captain Michael Halliday replaced Watt in 1809.

Fate

Heureux arrived in Plymouth on 20 January 1810 and was laid up in ordinary

Reserve fleet

A reserve fleet is a collection of naval vessels of all types that are fully equipped for service but are not currently needed, and thus partially or fully decommissioned. A reserve fleet is informally said to be "in mothballs" or "mothballed"; an equivalent expression in unofficial modern U.S....

. She was sold there on 1 September 1814 for £460 and was broken up.

External links

• Michael Phillips - Ships of the Old Navy