Hermione served in the West Indies during the early years of the French Revolutionary Wars, participating in the British attack on Port-au-Prince, where she led a small squadron that accompanied troop transports.

She saw action in 1797 under Pigot including leading a squadron that cut out nine ships at the Battle of Jean-Rabel without suffering any casualties.

This treatment of the crew led to the bloodiest mutiny in British naval history in September 1797 which saw Pigot and most of the officers killed.

On 25 October 1799, Captain Edward Hamilton, aboard HMS Surprise, cut her out of Puerto Cabello harbour.

On 2 June 1794, under Hills, the ship participated in the British attack on Port-au-Prince, where she led a small squadron that accompanied troop transports.

During a nine-month period, as captain of his previous command HMS Success he ordered at least 85 floggings, the equivalent of half the crew; two men died from their injuries.

[12] The disrating of Midshipman David O'Brien Casey, an experienced junior officer who had served competently under Captain Pigot during the previous months, was one of the primary triggers to the mutiny.

Pigot ordered their bodies thrown into the sea with the words "throw the lubbers overboard"; a particularly offensive insult in the seaman's vocabulary.

[9][15][b] The combination of the humiliation of Casey, the deaths of the three topmen, and the severe punishment of other sailors, appears to have driven some of the crew to mutiny.

Dudley Pope, in his book The Black Ship, argues that it was not Pigot's cruelty that drove the men to mutiny but his showing favouritism to some crewmen while inflicting overly harsh punishment on others.

Of the twenty Americans aboard the Hermione a slight majority appear to have received bonuses for "enlisting" with a distinct likelihood that the remainder had been pressed.

[19] Seaman John Farrel of New York and Bosun's Mate, Thomas Nash, of Waterford, Ireland would both take significant leadership roles during the mutiny.

[20] Thomas Nash aka Jonathan Robbins in 1799, after his extradition to Great Britain, was convicted of murder by court martial and hanged.

However his case United States vs Robbins 1799 led to the historic decision to grant political asylum to refugees.

As a prosecution witness, however, Mrs. Martin was a mixed blessing, having by then blamed captain Pigot's cruelty for the mutiny in a widely printed newspaper story.

[29] On the evening of 21 September 1797, a number of the crew, drunk on stolen rum, rushed Pigot's cabin and forced their way in after overpowering the marine stationed outside.

[33] Pigot and a number of other victims were still alive when they were thrown overboard, while the marine officer McIntosh was dying of yellow fever when the mutineers dragged him from his bunk.

[34] Third Lieutenant Foreshaw had fallen on a mizen chain whaler platform extending from the side of the ship but was hacked to death when he regained the deck.

No effort was made to oppose those actively involved in the mutiny, even by the sailors whom Pigot had brought with him from his previous ship and generally favoured.

[33] Three warrant officers survived: the mutineers refrained from killing the gunner and carpenter because they were considered useful to the ship, and Southcott the master was spared so he could navigate.

Southcott lived to be a key witness, along with Casey, who was also spared, and their eyewitness accounts and testimony were critical to the trials of many of the mutineers.

The mutineers claimed they had set the officers adrift in a small boat, as had happened in the mutiny on the Bounty some eight years earlier.

[14] To Parker's fury, Admiral Richard Rodney Bligh[c] had issued pardons to several crew members.

[42] Hamilton led a boarding party to retake Hermione and, after an exceptionally bloody action, sailed her out of danger under Spanish gunfire.

[43][44] The Spanish casualties included 119 dead; the British took 231 Spaniards prisoner, while another fifteen jumped or fell overboard.

[1] 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.