Lieutenant-Commander Charles Hewitt took command in July 1812, and Gladiator successively bore the flags of Rear Admirals Hargood, Edward Foote and Peter Halkett.

[1] When news of the outbreak of the War of 1812 reached Britain, the Royal Navy seized all American vessels then in British ports.

Gladiator was among the Royal Navy vessels then lying at Spithead or Portsmouth and so entitled to share in the grant for the American ships Belleville, Janus, Aeos, Ganges and Leonidas seized there on 31 July 1812.

In 1802, Edward Hamilton, who led the boat action that recovered Hermione, stood trial aboard Gladiator for cruelty.

Admiral Robert Calder requested a court-martial to review his decision not to pursue the enemy fleet after the engagement.

The court ruled that Calder's failure to pursue was an error of judgement, not a manifestation of cowardice or disaffection, and severely reprimanded him.

The accused was Sir Home Popham and the charge was that he had conducted an unapproved (and notably quixotic and unsuccessful) expedition to Buenos Ayres, leaving his duty station, the Cape of Good Hope, undefended.

Admiral Sir Eliab Harvey, who had commanded "The Fighting Temeraire" at the Battle of Trafalgar, believed that Gambier had missed an opportunity to inflict further damage upon the French fleet.

The court-martial assembled to try Captain Warwick Lake for having marooned a sailor named Robert Jeffery of HMS Recruit on the desert island of Sombrero.

[11] On 23 April 1813, Gladiator was the venue for the court-martial of the officers and men of Java for the loss of their ship in the action with the Constitution on 29 December 1812.

The court honourably acquitted Lieutenant Henry Ducie Chads and the other surviving officers and men of Java.

The subject was the conduct of Captain Daniel Pring, of Linnet, and the officers and men of the squadron at the Battle of Plattsburgh on Lake Champlain.