[2] On 5 November 1796 Camelion captured Gustaf Frederick and eight days later Nostra Senora del Carmen.

Boyer returned to command in November,[6] and on 1 March 1798 was 10 leagues north of Guernsey when he sighted a cutter.

Cameleon gave chase, but the wind was slight and the cutter's crew was able to row her to the safety under the guns on the Île de Batz.

[7] The four British merchant vessels were: Bowyer sent his prisoners into Portsmouth,[8] and set off in chase of the privateer's prizes.

[9] Cameleon arrived at Gibraltar on 5 May, having passed through a French squadron some eight or nine leagues west of Cape Spartel.

Maitland commanded her off the coast of Egypt, under Sir Sidney Smith, until the signing of the convention of al-'Arish on 24 January 1800.

[2] Between April and mid-May, Cameleon was part of a three-vessel naval squadron that, at the behest of Admiral Lord Keith, supported the Austrian force besieging the fortress of Savona.

The little squadron's boats rowed guard off the harbour's mouth for 41 nights; the famished garrison surrendered to the allies on 15 May.

[21] Mutine, Phaeton and Cameleon also shared in the proceeds of the capture five days later of eleven Genoese vessels.

[25] Sixteen days later, Camelion drove a Spanish ketch, name unknown, on shore off the mouth of the Rhone.

On 1 March 1801, some 70 British warships under the command of Admiral Lord Keith, Cameleon among them, together with transports carrying 16,000 troops, anchored in Abu Qir Bay near Alexandria.

The objective of the operation was the defeat of the French expeditionary force that had remained in Egypt after Napoleon's return to France.

Bad weather delayed disembarkation by a week but, on 8 March, Captain Alexander Cochrane of HMS Ajax gave the signal and deployed 320 boats, in double line abreast, to bring the troops ashore.

[a] Because Cameleon served in the navy's Egyptian campaign between 8 March and 2 September 1801, her officers and crew qualified for the clasp "Egypt" to the Naval General Service Medal that the Admiralty issued in 1847 to all surviving claimants.

Her ostensible mission was to buy bullocks for the fleet; actually Nelson tasked Staines with obtaining information on Spanish intentions vis-à-vis Britain.

[33] One 29 August, Cameleon's boats attempted to cut out five vessels sheltering under the protection of batteries at Rimasol.

Cameleon was lying nearly becalmed off Cap Corse, when Staines sighted an armed schooner escorting a transport.

He deployed the boats, which succeeded in capturing the schooner, the French naval vessel Renard, of 12 guns.

[34] French records report that Renard, under the command of lieutenant de vaisseau Jacques Constantin, was escorting a transport carrying troops from Calvi.

[36] In his dispatches, Nelson simply attributed the capture to his squadron, though Victory's log in the Admiralty records Cameleon and Stately as the captors.

[34] There the officers of the Malta Yard surveyed her; after she was found fit for service the navy commissioned her as Renard.

The Spaniards were too well armed and were able to repel Cameleon's boats, causing losses of five men killed, wounded or missing.

[2] 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.