Aeolus was ordered on 28 January 1800 from the yards of Mrs Frances Barnard, of Deptford,[3] and built to a design by Sir William Rule.

The first, also a 32-gun fifth rate (launched in 1758), was still in existence but had been reduced to harbour service in 1796 and renamed Guernsey in 1800 to free the name for the new ship.

[5] In the meantime, Guernsey was sold in May 1801, shortly after the third Aeolus had completed fitting out the previous month, at Deptford Dockyard.

In August she was briefly under the command of Lieutenant Henry Whitby, in an acting capacity, but Spranger was not superseded until Captain Andrew Evans took over in May 1803.

Antelope had a crew of eight men and was carrying provisions, dry goods, wine, staves, hoops and sundries.

Strachan, with his pennant aboard the 80-gun Caesar, had the 74-gun ships Hero, Courageux, Namur and Bellona, the 36-gun Santa Margarita and Aeolus.

[9] They were searching for a French squadron under Zacharie Allemand which was known to be cruising in the Atlantic, when they were joined late on 3 November by the 36-gun HMS Phoenix, under Captain Thomas Baker.

Baker reported that he had just escaped from a French squadron of four large ships, and Strachan immediately set off in pursuit.

[10] Though they were thought to be part of Allemand's squadron, they were in fact four ships which had escaped the Battle of Trafalgar under Rear-Admiral Pierre Dumanoir le Pelley, and were now hurrying north to reach Rochefort.

Panicked by the advance the French militia defending the bay set fire to the ships anchored there, including the frigate Amphitrite, and abandoned the forts in the southern part of the island.

[14] In 1847 the Admiralty awarded the Naval General Service Medal with clasp "Martinique" to all surviving claimants from the campaign.

[3] This article includes data released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported UK: England & Wales Licence, by the National Maritime Museum, as part of the Warship Histories project.