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|image=Sir Samuel Hood’s engagement with the French Squadron off Rochefort, Septr. 25, 1806.jpg |caption=The engagement with the French Squadron off Rochefort, HMS Monarch Capt. Richard Lee, engaging La Minerve, LArmide & La Glore}}
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HMS Alceste was built at Rochefort in 1804 for the French Navy as Minerve, an . In the spring of 1806, prior to her capture, she engaged , then under Lord Cochrane. During the duel she ran aground but Cochrane had to abort his attack when French reinforcements appeared.
The British captured her in an action on 25 September 1806, and the Royal Navy took Minerve into service as Alceste in March 1807; Alceste then continued to serve throughout the Napoleonic Wars. On 29 November 1811, Alceste led a British squadron that captured a French military convoy carrying more than 200 cannon to Trieste in the Balkans. After this loss, Napoleon changed the direction of his planned eastward expansion in 1812 from the Balkans to Russia. The British historian James Henderson has suggested that the two events were linked, and may have changed the course of the war.
In 1814, Alceste was converted to a troopship and used to transport British soldiers to North America during the War of 1812. Following the Treaty of Paris in 1815, Alceste carried Lord Amherst on his 1816 diplomatic mission to China. On the return journey, she struck a reef in the Java Sea; her wreck was subsequently plundered and burned by Malayan pirates.
Construction and armament
Alceste was built to a design by Pierre Rolland for the French Navy as Minerve, an . Her construction began at Rochefort in May 1804, she was launched in September 1805 and finished that November. Measuring along her gundeck with a beam of and a depth in the hold of ; she had a capacity of 1,097 tons burthen. When first fitted out, Minerve carried twenty-eight as her main battery and fourteen carronades on her quarter-deck; her forecastle had two long guns and two carronades.
French service
Minerve was initially commanded by Capitaine Jaques Collet, entering service during the early days of the War of the Fourth Coalition between Britain and her allies, and Napoleonic France. In April 1806 she was part of a squadron—under Contre-amiral Zacharie Allemand and comprising five ships-of-the-line, five frigates, and four smaller vessels—anchored under the shore batteries of the Île-d'Aix awaiting the opportunity to put to sea. The British knew the location of Allemand's squadron; on 25 April Admiral Edward Thornbrough, sent the British frigate close to the Île-d'Aix to count the enemy vessels. Allemand ordered Minerve and three corvettes, , , and , to meet the British frigate, leading to a skirmish in which no ship incurred much damage. Three other British vessels subsequently approached—the frigate , the 16-gun sloop , and a cutter—and Capitaine Collet ended the engagement by sailing Minerve to a position under the shelter of the island's guns.