HMS Milbrook (or Millbrook) was one of six vessels built to an experimental design by Sir Samuel Bentham.

After the Royal Navy took her into service in her decade-long career she took part in one notable single-ship action and captured several privateers and other vessels, all off the coast of Spain and Portugal.

Bentham's designs featured little sheer, negative tumblehome, a large-breadth to length ratio with structural bulkheads, and sliding keels.

In February 1800 Smith wrote that the Barrack-master-general (General Oliver de Lancey) had ordered that she continue to serve the board he headed because she was "extremely fast, in all weathers a good sea-boat, tight as a bottle.

[a] A violent gust of wind drove the frigate Stag on shore on 6 September in Vigo Bay.

However, Milbrook's rigging was so badly cut and her boats holed, that she was unable to take possession of her prize; seeing this, when a light breeze came up the French vessel used her sails and sweeps to escape.

[8] Smith was still in command, and off Spain, on 19 December when Milbrook captured the Spanish privateer lugger Barcelo.

[12] On 6 September Milbrook was at Plymouth awaiting carry dispatches to Rear-Admiral Sir James Saumarez, and the garrison at Gibraltar.

Subsequently, J. Helby, foreman of shipwrights, wrote that she had survived without any damage shocks that would bilge most other vessels.

[17] On 28 October 1803, Milbrook and Merlin were off Dunkirk when they pursued and drove on shore the French privateer lugger Sept Freres.

she sailed on 17 September with the gun-brigs Attack and Steady to escort the Newfoundland fleet to Poole, where Wolf would relieve them.

[24] On 6 May 1805 Milbrook captured the Spanish privateer lugger Travela, of three guns and 40 men, off Oporto.

Stork, which was carrying salt, had been part of the Newfoundland convoy when the 12-gun Spanish privateer brig Fenix had captured her a month earlier.

[27] On 18 May 1806, Milbrook was escorting John, Lothringen, master, from Lisbon to Oporto when they encountered a French 74-gun ship and a frigate off the Berlengas (known to the British as the Burlings).

[29][d] A little over two weeks later, on, 17 September, Milbrook, in company with the letter of marque Ceres, captured the Danish brig Kraben.

[35] Milbrook arrived off Berlenga Grande Island in the Berlengas—known traditionally to the British as "the Burlings"—in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Portugal on 24 March 1808 and anchored.

He next captained the hired armed lugger Black Joke on a special service to the Spanish coast before taking command of the bomb vessel Desperate on the Downs station.