The contract for the first ship was placed with the Thames-side yard of John Dudman, where the keel was laid in June 1794.

[6] Phoebe was first commissioned in October 1795 under Captain Robert Barlow,[6][a] for the Irish coast and Edward Pellew's squadron.

[8] On 10 January 1797, after an eight-hour chase, she captured the 16-gun Atalante, under the command of Lieutenant Dordelin, off the Isles of Scilly.

In 1797 Phoebe was off Brest as part of an inshore squadron of frigates under Sir Edward Pellew in Indefatigable.

Her hope was that well-directed fire would disable Phoebe's masts, rigging, and sails, and thereby enable Heureux to escape.

On 19 February 1801, about six miles (9.7 km) east of Gibraltar, Phoebe sighted a French ship off Ceuta, also sailing eastwards.

She had a crew of 315 men, but also was ferrying 400 troops under General Desfourneaux to reinforce the French invasion force in Egypt.

[19] The heavy casualties were the result of French troops crowding the upper deck despite their small arms fire contributing little or nothing in the dark to her defense.

[21][22] Hindostan arrived at Gibraltar in March 1804 and then sailed from there to join Admiral Nelson off Toulon in company with Phoebe,[23] but the vessels became separated during a gale in the Gulf of Lyons.

[c] On 13 June Phoebe and Amazon made ready to engage two French frigates anchored under the guns of the north-most fort at Toulon.

[d] HMS Victory was passing the island of Toro (off Mallorca; 39°27′44″N 2°28′18″E / 39.462307°N 2.471722°E / 39.462307; 2.471722) on 4 April 1805 when Phoebe brought the news that the French fleet under Admiral Pierre-Charles Villeneuve had escaped from Toulon.

While Nelson made for Sicily to see if the French were heading for Egypt, Villeneuve entered Cadiz to link up with the Spanish fleet.

Then, while Nelson was pursuing the French fleet from Toulon to the West Indies, Capel, in Phoebe, was in charge of a small squadron of five frigates and two bomb vessels with the mission of covering Sicily, Sardinia and the route to Egypt.

When the Combined Fleet put to sea on 19 October, Phoebe was first in line, followed by Naiad and the third-rate Defence.

During the subsequent Battle of Trafalgar, Phoebe relayed Nelson's signals to the rest of fleet, and remained close to the action although she did not actually engage the enemy.

In the gale that followed a few days later Donegal and Phoebe assisted two of the prizes, Swiftsure and Bahama, with the result that they were saved.

[6] On 9 July Phoebe, Thames and Amfitrite were deployed to the Shetland Islands to find a French squadron reported to be destroying British and Russian fishing and merchant vessels in the Arctic.

[6] By 21 November Phoebe was off the island of Rodrigues preparing for a joint naval and military expedition to take the Île de France.

In 1847 this battle earned Phoebe's surviving crew the clasp "Off Tamatave 20 May 1811" to the Naval General Service Medal.

On 31 August Stopford detached the frigates Nisus, President, and Phoebe, and the sloop Hesper to take Cheribon, a seaport about 35 leagues (170 km) east of Batavia.

Together with a landing party of seamen, marines, and some sepoys, Captain Hillyar took quiet possession of the fort and public stores.

In 1847 the Admiralty authorized the issuance of the Naval General Service Medal with clasp "Java" to all remaining survivors of the campaign.

One was the Vengeance, an American letter of marquee 12-gun schooner from New York, bound to Bordeaux, laden with sugar and coffee.

[33] Earlier, Hunter had captured a transport and a brig from a convoy under the escort of hired armed cutter Nimrod.

On 6 July Phoebe, the sloop-of-war Cherub, and Racoon sailed from Rio de Janeiro around Cape Horn to the Juan Fernández Islands.

On 8 February 1814 Phoebe and Cherub arrived at Valparaíso, a neutral port, where Essex and her prizes were anchored.

Having trapped Essex in the harbour, Hillyar waited six weeks for her to come out and thwarted all of the efforts of her captain, David Porter, to escape.

A squall took off his main topmast and he attempted to return to harbour but Phoebe and Cherub drove Essex into a nearby bay and defeated her in a short engagement.

Gamble and seven men (four unfit for duty) escaped and sailed Sir Andrew Hammond 2,000 miles (3,200 km) before they had the misfortune to meet up with Cherub.

[6] 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.