HMS Esperance was launched in America in 1781, and is first listed in Lloyd's Register in 1784 under the name Clementina.

[6] Between her return and her next voyage, Ellis was almost completely rebuilt, and from the change in subsequent reports of her burthen, enlarged.

4th slave trading voyage (1789–1791): Captain Joseph Matthews sailed from Liverpool on 3 June 1789 and arrived in Africa on 8 October.

[7] 5th slave trading voyage (1791–1792): Captain Given sailed from Liverpool on 29 June 1791 and arrived in Africa on 24 August.

[9] There is no evidence in Lloyd's List's ship arrival and departure data for the period of any vessel with Heart, master.

The entries in Lloyd's Register are broadly consistent with respect to masters' names and years with those from the database on slave voyages.

[1][12] On 8 June 1794, Esperance arrived in Jacmel, Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti), from France with the official proclamation of the abolition of slavery,[13][14] which Léger-Félicité Sonthonax, as one of the Civil Commissioners of Saint-Domingue, had already unilaterally declared for the French colony the year before amid a slave rebellion and attacks from British and Spanish forces.

Ironically, Esperance also brought the news to the Civil Commissioners that the National Convention had impeached them on 16 July 1793 and ordered them to return promptly to France.

[14][15][16][a] On 8 January 1795, Argonaut, under the command of Captain Alexander John Ball, captured Esperance on the North America station.

Because she was captured in good order and sailed well, Rear Admiral George Murray, the British commander in chief of the North American station, put a British crew aboard and sent Esperance out on patrol with Lynx, under the command of John Poo Beresford, on 31 January.

[18] On 1 March the two vessels captured the Cocarde Nationale (or National Cockade), a privateer from Charleston, South Carolina, of 14 guns, six swivels and 80 men.

Esperance and Lynx recaptured the ship Norfolk, of Belfast, and the brig George, of Workington.

They pressed many men on board, narrowly exempting the Irish revolutionary Wolfe Tone, who was going to Philadelphia.

[22] Esperance was formally commissioned into the Royal Navy in August under Commander Jonas Rose.

[23] Poisson Volant was sailing from Aux Cayes to New York and turned out to be the former HMS Flying Fish that two French privateers had captured in June 1795 while she was on her way to Jamaica.

Poisson Volant's crew had cut down her gunwales and thrown some of her guns overboard during the chase.