HMS Trimmer (1782)

HMS Trimmer was the French privateer Anti-Briton, which HMS Stag (1758) captured in January 1782 and which the Royal Navy took into service. Early in the French Revolutionary Wars Trimmer captured a privateer. Though she never sailed again after December 1793, the Navy converted her to a temporary fire ship in 1798. The Admiralty sold her in 1801.

Capture
On 4 January 1782, Stag under the command of Captain Robert Palliser Cooper, captured the French privateer Anti-Briton. Anti-Briton was armed with twenty-two 6-pounder guns and had a crew of 104 men under the command of John Kelly. Cooper had received intelligence that a privateer cutter had taken several vessels in the channel between Ireland and Britain. As soon as the weather permitted, Cooper set sail and was fortunate enough to encounter and capture her. Cooper reported that he took great pleasure in capturing her as she was quite new and had done a great deal of mischief. Kelly had captured the cutter Hope in August 1781.

Cooper brought Anti-Briton into Dublin. There it was discovered that she had been fitted out in Dunkirk and that almost all her crew were English or Irish. These men were incarcerated at Newgate Prison as traitors. Kelly was a native of Rush, but held a commission as a lieutenant in the French navy. He had reportedly captured some 170 vessels that he had destroyed or ransomed for large prices. Kelly would ensure that he received the ransom money by holding sufficient hostages until the bills drawn for the ransom were paid. (When Stag captured Anti-Briton, there were reportedly twelve hostages aboard representing some £60,000 in ransom money.) Kelly had been a smuggler; in later life he ended up a porter on the quay at Bordeaux.

Although there is a great deal of ambiguity about how many crew were abroad Anti-Briton, ultimately the authorities determined that 36 men were French. These the British treated as prisoners-of-war and incarcerated at Kilkenny. Sixty men the authorities deemed traitors. However, they never came to trial as Stag had delivered them to Dublin, not Britain, and legal opinion was that an Admiralty court there would not have jurisdiction, and a British court would not convict them. The men were released after the end of the war with France in 1783.

Career
The Admiralty registered Anti-Briton as a sloop on 7 May. However, the Navy fitted and rigged her at Plymouth as a brig between May and September.

Commander John Hutt commissioned Trimmer in July. From February 1783 she was under the command of Commander William Titcher until April, when she was paid off. She was recommissioned in September, and then in May 1784 came under the command of John Luck.

In February 1785 Commander Charles Tyler recommissioned her. Under Tyler she was employed in the Bristol Channel in the suppression of smuggling. In 1787 Lieutenant George M'Kinley went in pursuit of a smuggler in Trimmer's jolly boat. He was gone for 30 hours because of a heavy gale and all but lost.

Commander Mark Robinson became her captain in March 1789. Commander Francis Fayerman recommissioned Trimmer in October 1791.

In 1793 Trimmer was on the Jersey station. There she captured one of the first armed French vessels flying the tri-colour flag. On 5 April Trimmer and the brig HMS Liberty (1779), under the command of George M'Kinley, captured the French privateer Courier.

Commander Charles Craven took command in May, for the Channel. However, she was paid-off shortly afterwards because she was in a defective state. In December she was laid up at sheerness.

Between June and July 1798 fitted Trimmer as a fireship, but then laid her up again. Commander Edward Parker recommissioned her in March 1801, for the North Sea, but the Admiralty cancelled the deployment and ordered her sold.

Fate
On 30 June 1801, the Navy offered the "Fire Brig" Trimmer for sale at Sheerness. She was sold on 18 July for £710.