HMS Active was a Royal Navy fifth-rate frigate launched on 14 December 1799 at Chatham Dockyard. Sir John Henslow designed her as an improvement on the Artois-class frigates. She served during the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars, capturing numerous enemy vessels. Her crews participated in one campaign and three actions that would later qualify them for the Naval General Service Medal. She returned to service after the wars and finally was broken up in 1860.
French Revolutionary Wars
Active was commissioned under Captain Charles Davers in December 1799 and convoyed East Indiamen in 1800. She sailed from Portsmouth on 28 June 1800, escorting a convoy of eight vessels, at least six of which, such as , were East Indiamen.
Then she began operating in the English Channel as part of the Channel Fleet. She later sailed with a convoy for the Mediterranean. In September 1800 she was under the temporary command of Captain John Giffard. On 2 October Active and recaptured the brig Stout.
On 26 January 1801 Active captured the privateer Quinola after a two-hour chase. She was armed with 14 guns, 6 and 2-pounders, and carried a crew of 48 men. She had sailed from Morlaix the morning before and had not made any captures.
Giffard then removed to the third rate Magnificent on 23 February. Active served in the navy's Egyptian campaign between 8 March 1801 and 2 September, which qualified her officers and crew for the clasp "Egypt" to the Naval General Service Medal that the Admiralty issued in 1847 to all surviving claimants.
From October Active came under Commander Thomas Shortland, also temporary. On 25 October she captured the Genoese pinco St Anna.
In 1802 Active sailed to Egypt with specie. On 7 March she arrived in Lisbon from Gibraltar, together with . While the captains were ashore the police of the Guard threw the crews of their barges into subterranean holding cells. When the captains went to the office of the Captain of the Regiment of Lisbon, he had the two captains detained as well. Although the British consul and others remonstrated, the captains were held overnight before being released. The underlying issue may have been a violation of quarantine rules that applied to all vessels coming from the Mediterranean.
A letter from Gibraltar dated 24 June reported that and "a frigate" had sailed to Algiers to secure from the Dey the release of British seamen from three vessels that the Algerines had seized and sold the vessels and cargoes on the grounds that the vessels had sailed the Mediterranean with false passes, or old ones issued to other vessels. The frigate that accompanied Triumph was Active.
On 19 September a lightning storm occurred at Gibraltar. Ships that sustained strikes, in some cases that caused damage or casualties, included Active, , , and . A strike destroyed several feet of the topgallant mast on Active and killed the ship's butcher, who had been standing near the main mast with a cleaver in his hand.
Napoleonic Wars
In August 1804, Active was under the command of Captain Richard Mowbray, for the blockade of Toulon, in the Mediterranean. (Captain Davers had resigned his command due to ill-health caused by yellow fever, which he had caught on the Leeward Islands station. He died in 1805.) On 27 April Active captured the French letter of marque schooner Les Amis. Les Amis was armed with four 6-pounder guns, had a crew of 20 men, and was carrying a cargo of wine and merchandise from Bordeaux to her home port of Cayenne.
At some point Active captured the Prussian vessels Ida Margaretta, Anna Dorothea, and Norberg. On 12 March 1807, Active and Endymion captured the Danish vessel Henrie and Maria. The prize money was remitted from Malta.
In 1807, Active returned to the Mediterranean. An initial assignment was her participation in Thomas Louis's squadron in Admiral Duckworth's Dardanelles Operation. On the way in on 19 February Active drove a frigate aground and then burnt her, all without suffering any casualties. However, Active had eight men wounded on 3 March during the withdrawal from the Dardanelles, one of whom, the boatswain, later died. During the withdrawal she suffered a hit from an 800-pound stone cannonball, 6'6" in diameter, which did damage but caused no casualties.