[1] The ship was a frigate of the Pallas group, the latest iteration of the French Navy's standard Hébé class designed by Jacques-Noël Sané (also copied by the Royal Navy as the Leda class) and had design dimensions of 144 pieds 6 pouces by 36 pieds 8 pouces (corresponding to 154 feet (47 m) by 39 feet 1 inch (11.91 m)).

[2] However, according to her captain Pierre Bouvet, the brackets of the bitts beneath the forecastle blocked the recoil of the two pairs of main-deck 18-pounders nearest the bows, and he had these guns removed into the hold for use as extra ballast, regarding the improvement in the ship's sailing qualities as more than compensation for the reduction in broadside weight.

[3] The main battery was thus reduced to twelve pairs of 18-pounders, and there seems to be little confirmation of precisely what calibre of guns were really carried on her quarterdeck and forecastle.

[6] On 28 November 1812, Bouvet loaded the material for his crew's new uniforms on board, and later that day the Aréthuse and her sister-ship Rubis sailed from Nantes to intercept British trade off West Africa.

[8][Note 1] On 27 January 1813, Aréthuse intercepted the brig HMS Daring (Lieutenant Pascoe) off Tamara (one of the Iles de Los off Guinea).

In 1833, she was razeed into a corvette, reducing her forecastle to a sail-handling platform in the bows and her quarterdeck to a roof over the stern cabin, so that the main gundeck became an open flush deck, carrying a revised armament of eleven pairs of the new 30-pounder short guns.

[11] The reconstruction was completed in 1834, but Aréthuse was only returned to active service in 1841, then decommissioned in 1851,[11] or according to other sources, 1861,[citation needed] and used as a coal depot at Brest until being broken up in 1865.