Royal Navy Service
Orestes was fitted out at Deptford between February and August 1782, with her armament consisting of 18 short nine-pounders and ten ½-pounder swivel guns. The cost for her to be fitted and coppered came to £3,961.19.11p. Orestes was commissioned in July 1782 under her first captain, Commander John Bowers, and on 30 November that year she captured the privateer Complaissance. Command of Orestes passed to Commander James Ellis in November the following year. In 1784 she was involved in a skirmish, the Battle of Mudeford with South Coast smugglers, during this fight her master William Allen was fatally wounded. Ellis remained as captain for the next two and a half years, being succeeded by Commander Manley Dixon in June 1786. Commander Thomas Shivers took over in June 1789, and in December 1790 Commander Sir Harry Burrard was Orestes's new captain. While he was in command Orestes's main armament was reduced from nine-pounders to six-pounders. Burrard sailed her to the West Indies in 1792, where in January 1793 Commander Lord Augustus Fitzroy took over as captain. Orestes and Fitzroy returned to Britain in April 1793, during the first few months of the French Revolutionary Wars.
Read more about this topic: HMS Orestes (1781)
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