HMS Ranger was the 14-gun revenue cutter Rose, launched in 1776, that the Royal Navy purchased in 1787, and that the French captured in 1794.

The Navy commissioned Rose as Ranger in April 1787 under the command of Lieutenant Samuel Featherstone, for Portland and the Start.

[3] Ranger, under Cotgrave's command, was part of Admiral Lord Howe's British Channel Fleet at the battle of the Glorious First of June.

Still, in 1847 when the Admiralty authorized the issue of the Naval General Service Medal with clasp "1 June 1794", the surviving claimants from Ranger's crew, if any, were included.

Ranger was cruising in the Channel when on 11 June 1794 she encountered the French frigate Railleuse off Brest.

The French treated Ranger's crew badly, stripping the men naked and keeping them in the open for two days until they arrived at Brest.

[8] Then on 8 September Ranger captured Supply, Meriton, master, as she was sailing from Martinique to London.

[10] Then in June or July 1796, Ranger captured and burned Britannia, Ford, master, which had been sailing from Liverpool to Newfoundland.

On 15 October 1797 Ranger was in the roads of the Canary Islands where she had the misfortune to encounter HMS Indefatigable.