A Magicienne class frigate |
|
Career (France) | |
---|---|
Name: | Sensible |
Namesake: | French: "sensitive" |
Ordered: | 23 January 1786 |
Builder: | Toulon |
Laid down: | February 1786 |
Launched: | 9 August 1787 |
In service: | March 1788 |
Captured: | 28 June 1798 |
Career (UK) | |
Name: | HMS Sensible |
Fate: | Wrecked on 2 March 1802 |
General characteristics | |
Class and type: | Magicienne-class frigate |
Displacement: |
600 tonnes |
Length: | 44.2 m (145 ft) |
Beam: | 11.2 m (37 ft) |
Draught: | 5.2 m (17 ft) |
Sail plan: | Full rigged ship |
Armament: |
32 guns: |
Sensible was a 32-gun Magicienne-class frigate of the French Navy. She was captured by the Royal Navy in 1798 and taken in to service as HMS Sensible. She was lost in a grounding off Ceylon in 1802.
From November 1789, she served at Martinique under captain Durand de Braye. In September 1790, she ferried Joséphine de Beauharnais and her daughter Hortense from Martinique to Toulon.
In 1792, she took part in operations against Sardinia. In 1793, she was equipped as a bomb ship.
On 9 December 1795, part of Gantaume's squadron, Sensible, along with Sardine, captured the 28-gun HMS Nemesis in the neutral port of Smyrna.[1] The French warships entered the harbour in disregard of its neutrality and called on Nemesis to surrender. Murray Maxwell (then a midshipman) was taken prisoner on this occasion.
Sensible was subsequently armed en flûte and used as a transport in the Mediterranean. On 27 June 1798, she was captured by the 38-gun HMS Seahorse.[2] She was subsequently brought into British service as HMS Sensible.[3]
On 14 May 1801, HMS Sensible landed troops in bay of Kosseir. On 2 March 1802, as she sailed off Ceylon under Captain Robert Sauce, she was wrecked on a quicksand. The crew was saved, but the ship became a total loss