HMS Barbadoes was originally a French privateer and then a slave ship named Brave or Braave.

The key source for British warships declares that she was built in Bordeaux in 1799 and captured on 16 March 1804,[4] or in May 1803,[5] in either case in the West Indies.

HMS Loire did capture a privateer named Braave on 16 March 1804, but on the Irish station, not in the West Indies.

There was a French vessel named Brave that Lloyd's List reported the British had brought into St Lucia in 1803.

[7] The vessel in question was the negrier (slave ship) Brave that the British captured in 1803, in one account as she was coming from West Africa.

Brave, under the command of Jean-David Sers and with owner Jacques Conte, had embarked 760 (or 733) captives in West Africa and arrived at an unspecified port in the British Caribbean with 700.

[8][a] By a French account, two privateers from Liverpool had captured Brave of the coast of Angola on 14 September 1803 after an action of two hours that left eight Frenchmen dead and 14 wounded.

[9] By British accounts, there was only one captor, the Liverpool slave ship Tamer, which suffered five men killed and seven wounded in the engagement.

French sources describe Brave as a privateer frigate based in Bordeaux and probably built there circa 1799.

[10] On 12 May 1801, Lloyd's List (LL) reported that the French privateer Braave had captured Nimble, Nuttell, master, as she was sailing from Demerara to Liverpool.

[12][13] In its next issue, Lloyd's List reported that HMS Glenmore had recaptured two merchant vessels that had fallen prey to the French privateer Braave.

[14] Braave later captured six more merchant vessels, Shedden, Victory, Vine, Ann, Urania, and Cecilia.

The plan had been that the local merchants Tabois and Dubois would hire her for 50,000 piastres to sail to India's Coromandel Coast to acquire textiles.

Four days into her first cruize, on 17 October, she captured the French privateer Napoleon, of 18 guns and 150 men under the command of enseigne de vaisseau Suyrvens Pitot.

Desirée replied to several broadsides with small arms fire, and as a result suffered seven men killed or wounded.

[26] In June 1805 Barbadoes was in company with Netley as they escorted a convoy of 15 merchant vessels back to Britain.

The two British warships managed to escape, but Villeneuve's fleet captured the entire convoy, valued at some five million pounds.

[30] In July 1811 Hodgson transferred to HMS Owen Glendower (1808), and Captain Edward Rushworth replaced him on Barbadoes.

When the pumps could not keep up with the water entering from leaks, Captain Huskisson decided to abandon ship; one man drowned as the crew tried to reach shore.

There Admiral Sir John Warren, commander in chief of the North America and West Indies Station, despatched HMS Shannon and the schooner Bream to rescue the crew and retrieve the money Barbadoes was carrying.