In early January 1797, he returned from the Cape of Good Hope, in command of the newly captured HMS Prince Frederick.
[1] The Prins Frederik was a 68-gun Dutch Sailing Warship built in (1779), renamed Revolutie in 1796 and captured by the British in Saldanha Bay, off the coast of South Africa, on 17 August 1796.
In August 1798, [2] Astle was appointed captain and commander of the fifth-rate 38-gun frigate HMS La Virginie,[3][4] a post he held until February 1803.
Astle sailed to the ‘East Indies’, present-day Indonesia, and reported to The London Gazette the capture of a number of Dutch ships around Ambon, in February 1801.
[5] Later, Astle held the command of HMS Spartan,[6] a new ship which was launched at Rochester on the Medway in August 1806.