HMS Utile (1799)

History
France
Name	Utile
Builder	Bordeaux
Launched	1799
Captured	April 1799
Great Britain
Name	HMS Utile
Acquired	1799 by capture
Commissioned	September 1801
Fate	Foundered November 1801
General characteristics [1]
Tons burthen	c.250[2] 27888⁄94 (bm)
Length	Overall:89 ft 6 in (27.3 m) Keel:74 ft 0+1⁄2 in (22.6 m)
Beam	26 ft 7 in (8.1 m)
Depth of hold	12 ft 10 in (3.9 m)
Sail plan	Brig-sloop
Complement	French:120[3] Royal Navy:76
Armament	French:16 × 8-pounder long guns[3] Royal Navy:14 × 24-pounder carronades + 2 × 6-pounder chase guns

HMS Utile was the French 16-gun privateer brig-sloop Utile launched in 1799 that the Royal Navy captured in 1799 and took into service; she foundered in the Mediterranean in 1801.

Utile was launched in 1799 and fitted at Bordeaux.^[1]

On 1 April 1799, Boadicea captured the brig Utile. Utile was armed with sixteen 8-pounder guns, of which ten were brass. She had a crew of 120 men and was three weeks out of Bordeaux.^[3]

Boadicea sent Utile into Portsmouth, where she arrived on 11 April. She sat there until May to October 1801, when she underwent fitting. Commander Edward Jekyll Canes commissioned her in September 1801 for the Mediterranean.^[1]

Canes sailed from Portsmouth on the 20 October 1801 for the Mediterranean with details of the preliminaries of the peace treaty. Utile sailed from Gibraltar on 5 November with £27,000 for the payment of the garrison at Minorca.^[4] She was never seen again and was presumed to have foundered with all hands.^[5]

• Demerliac, Alain (2004). La Marine de la Révolution: Nomenclature des Navires Français de 1792 A 1799 (in French). Éditions Ancre. ISBN 2-906381-24-1.
• Hepper, David J. (1994). British Warship Losses in the Age of Sail, 1650–1859. Rotherfield: Jean Boudriot. ISBN 0-948864-30-3.
• Winfield, Rif (2008). British Warships in the Age of Sail 1793–1817: Design, Construction, Careers and Fates. Seaforth Publishing. ISBN 978-1-86176-246-7.