HMS Heureux was a 22-gun French privateer brig that the British captured in 1799 and which served with the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars. She was lost at sea in 1806. Her fate remains an unsolved mystery to this day.
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The frigate HMS Stag captured the privateer Heureux in the English Channel off Bordeaux on 17 October 1800. Heureux had intended to cruise the West Indies. Instead, she arrived at Plymouth on 25 March 1800.
The Admiralty bought her and commissioned her under her existing name. She completed her fitting out in November and was armed with 2 9-pounder guns at her bow and 20 32-pounder carronades for her broadsides. Captain Loftus Bland commissioned her in August 1800 and sailed for the Leeward Islands in February 1801.[1]
Three months after her arrival, on 28 May near Barbados, she chased down and captured the 16-gun French sloop Egypte from Guadeloupe. The chase lasted 16 hours while Egypte kept up a running fight for three hours. The prize was said to be the fastest vessel out of Guadeloupe from which she had sailed 13 days earlier.[2]
On 16 August, she was between Martinique and St. Lucia and in sight as Guachapin captured the Spanish 18-gun privateer Teresa after an action of an hour and a half.[3]
On 26 September 1803 she captured the schooner Serpente at Berbice. She then captured the French privateer and blockade runner Flibustier 120 miles from Barbados on 26 February 1804.[4] Although pierced for 14 guns she was armed with six French 6-pounders and had 68 men on board. She was new and had provisions for a long cruise from Guadeloupe.[5]
In 1805 she was under Captain George Younghusband. In January she captured two Spanish merchant ships, carrying wine and military stores, both called San Sebastian, and over the winter of 1805-1806 she took six more ships carrying considerable amounts of specie and goods, making the crew of the Heureux quite wealthy.
The five were:[6]
In March 1806 Captain John Morrison assumed command. Heureus was ordered to transfer her position from the West Indies to Halifax, Nova Scotia in the spring of 1806, and began her passage in August. She failed to arrive in Halifax, and despite a search, she and her crew had disappeared without trace some where along the U.S. seaboard.[9] She was presumed lost in June 1806 with all hands, that is, about 150 crew.[10]
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