HMS Tigress (1808)

HMS Tigress was the American merchantman Numa and then French letter of marque Pierre Cézar that the Royal Navy acquired by capture and put into service as the gunbrig Tigress. She spent some time on the West African coast in the suppression of the slave trade. The Admiralty later renamed her as Algerine. She was broken up in 1818.

Merchantman
Tigress was originally launched around 1801 in Baltimore, Maryland, as the Numa. There is a record of her taking a half dozen Irish passengers to the United States in 1803.

Numa sailed in April 1808 from New York for Saint Barthélemy, which was then a Swedish colony, but arrived at Saint-Pierre, Martinique. There French merchants bought her and fitted her out as the letter-of-marque Pierre Cézar (equally Pierre César or Pierre Czar or Pierre Caesar) and armed her with two 6-pounder guns and four 18-pounder carronades, though she was pierced for 18 guns.

On 29 May she sailed from Saint Pierre for L'Orient with a cargo of sugar, coffee, and cotton. One month later, on 29 June, the 40-gun frigate HMS Seine captured her after a four hour and twenty minute chase off the Spanish coast. Pierre Cézar was a fast sailer and her American mate claimed that the frigate would not have caught her had she not been overloaded. Comet, Unicorn and Cossack shared in the capture.

British service
The Admiralty bought Pierre Cézar for almost £2266 and took her into service as Tigress, her predecessor Tigress having been lost earlier that year to the Danes, who captured her near Agerso in the Great Belt. The Navy fitted out Tigress at Plymouth, arming her with fourteen 12-pounder carronades and commissioning her in October that year under Lieutenant Robert Bones.

She spent some time on the West African coast between 1809 and 1810 as part of the nascent West Africa Squadron. Early in her time on the West African coast Tigress was involved in an attack on the French colony in Senegal in July 1809, that aimed to curtail the activities of privateers. The attack resulted in the capture of the colony, which remained in British hands until 1817. The expedition's success was bought at the cost of the loss to grounding of 32-gun fifth-rate frigate HMS Solebay, though Solebay's entire crew was saved.

On the West Africa station Tigress captured several slavers.
 * Lucia (3 April 1810)
 * Marquis de Romana (22 September 1810)
 * Elizabeth (4 April 1811).

The Vice-Admiralty Court at Sierra Leone declared both Marquis de Romana and Elizabeth as "forfeited to His Majesty for offences committed against the Act for the abolition of the slave trade".

Tigress returned to England at the end of July 1812. On 5 August Tigress was one of many British ships that shared in the capture of the Asia. In the autumn Lieutenant William Carnegie took command of Tigress at Plymouth.

Algerine
Tigress went on to serve in the Baltic in 1813 under Lieutenant Robert Henderson. In 1814 the Navy converted Tigress to a 14-gun cutter and on 21 April 1814 renamed her Algerine, Algerine (1810) having been wrecked the previous year.

Algerine was recommissioned in August 1816 under her last commander, Lieutenant William Price. On 12 December, her boats, together with those of the revenue cutter Harpy, Lieutenant Hugh Anderson, picked up 110 kegs of spirits at sea. The London Gazette announced that on 15 August 1817 the monies due as a result of picking up these kegs of spirits at sea would shortly be ready for payment.

Fate
Algerine finally was sold at Portsmouth to Thomas Pittman for £450 on 29 January 1818.