HMS Redbridge was one of four schooner-rigged gunboats built to an experimental design by Sir Samuel Bentham.

The design featured a large-breadth to length ratio with structural bulkheads, and sliding keels.

[2] The great gale of 8–9 November 1800 caught Redbridge and several other vessels in St Aubyn's Bay, Jersey.

Still, she arrived in Spithead on Wednesday 12 November, though without her guns, which she had thrown overboard to lighten her.

[5][6] Havik, Pelican, the hired armed cutter Lion, and a Guernsey privateer were driven ashore.

[12] The four sail were a squadron of French frigates, Cornélie, Rhin, Uranie, and Tamise,[13] and possibly some corvettes that had sortied in the night from Toulon.

[3] At the time of Redbridge's capture, Lemprière had aboard an unauthorised copy of the British naval signal book.

The French used the signals to try to lure into Toulon a British boat outside the harbour, but the captain, sensing something amiss, did not take the bait.

On 4 November the Admiralty ordered all commanders-in-chief to change the numeral flags in accordance with a new pattern.