HMS Jaseur (1807)

HMS Jaseur was originally a French navy brig that the Royal Navy captured in 1807 and took into service under her own name. She participated in one campaign and was lost in August 1808.

French service
The French navy purchased the mercantile brig Jaseur, meaning redwing, in Martinique in July 1806. On 10 July 1807, HMS Bombay (1805), under Captain William Jones Lye, captured Jaseur some eight leagues off Little Andaman, after a chase of nine hours. Jaseur was armed with 12 guns and had a crew of 55 men under the command of a Lieutenant de vaisseau. She had left Île de France on 15 April and had made no captures.

British service
The British commissioned her under Lieutenant Thomas Laugharne in December, at Java.

On 20 November she sailed in a squadron under the command of Rear-admiral Sir Edward Pellew from Malacca to the Dutch post at Griessie, in the East Indies. They arrived on 5 December. When the Dutch commandant refused to surrender the vessels there, all of which were on shore, dismantled and without their guns, the British squadron turned its guns on a battery of twelve 9 and 18-pounder guns at Sambelangan on Madura Island. The governor and council of Surabaya, a settlement about 15 miles higher up the river, and to which Gressie was subordinate, signed a treaty. On 11 December the British set fire to the ships at Gressie, which the Dutch had already scuttled, and destroyed the guns and military stores in the garrison of Gressie, and at the battery of Sambelangan.

Fate
Jaseur disappeared in August 1808 while sailing from Bengal to Prince of Wales Island. She was presumed to have foundered with all hands. She left Calcutta on 8 August with dispatches for Admiral Drury, in company with a local merchant brig heading to Macao. They encountered a violent gale and separated, with Jaseur being lost.