HMS Arab (1795)

HMS Arab was the French 20-gun corvette Jean Bart, launched in 1793. The British captured her in 1795. She was wrecked in 1796.

French service and capture
Jean Bart was the lead ship of her class and possibly built to a design by Pierre Duhamel. She cruised the Channel, the North Sea, and the Atlantic as far as New York.

However, on 29 March 1795 she was under the command of Lieutenant de vaisseau Néel when she encountered HMS Cerberus (1794) and HMS Santa Margarita (1779) in the Channel. They captured Jean Bart, which accounts describe as having 18 guns and a crew of 110 men, or 20 guns and 120 men. HMS Hannibal (1786) shared in the prize.

She was sailing to Brest with dispatches from the French minster in the United States. In a deposition, Guillaume François Néel of Saint Malo testified that he had been the captain of Jean Bart at her capture, and that she had had 118 persons aboard, one of whom was an American and all the rest were French. He stated that he had thrown a packet containing the dispatches overboard but that it had floated rather than sunk, and that a boat from HMS Cerberus (1794) had retrieved it.

The Admiralty took her into the Royal Navy as HMS Arab. She was named and registered on 6 October 1795. Between July and December the Navy had her fitted at Portsmouth for £515. She was commissioned in October 1795 under Commander Stephen Seymour.

British service and loss
Seymour sailed Arab for the Channel, where she joined the squadron under Sir John Borlase Warren. On 9 June she sighted a cutter and a brig and set off in pursuit, but lost them in the night. Next morning she sighted land, but before she could turn, struck a rock near the Glénan islands. She could not pull herself off the reef before so much water had poured in that she had to be abandoned. Captain Seymour drowned, but accounts differ as to whether others of her crew did so too.