[2] Under the command of enseigne de vaisseau non entretenu Troquet, in October the lugger Renard sailed from Havre to Brest.

The next year, first under Catelain, and then lieutenant de vaisseau Bigot, Renard protected the herring fisheries off Havre, escorted convoys, and inspected facilities between Cherbourg and Boulogne-sur-Mer.

On 21 November 1800, Renard was still under Constantin's command when she fought a British cutter, apparently inconclusively, in Île-d'Aix Roads.

[2] In November 1803, the schooner Renard, under the command of lieutenant de vaisseau Jacques Constantin, was escorting a transport carrying troops from Calvi.

[6] In his dispatches, Nelson simply attributed the capture to his squadron, though Victory's log in the Admiralty records Cameleon and Stately as the captors.

[6] There the officers of the Malta Yard surveyed her; after she was found fit for service the navy commissioned her as Renard and Nelson appointed Lieutenant Richard Spencer, who had earlier served on Cameleon and had transferred to Triumph, to command her.

[8] Nelson suggested that she should have a crew of 60 men, including two boys, and that Spencer apply to Sir Alexander Ball, the British governor of Malta, for Maltese to man her.

While escorting a convoy of merchantmen Crafty drove on shore and destroyed a Cisalpine 4-gun privateer that had come out from Syracuse.

Nelson pointed out that although destroying privateers that violated Sicily's neutrality was a worthwhile objective, Spencer's first responsibility was to protect the convoy and that he should not have left the merchantmen.

Furthermore, had he stayed with them, he might have come to have legal ground to engage the newcomer [once it had revealed by its actions, such as firing a shot, that it was indeed a privateer].

Spenser gave Mr. Andrew Towill, Renard's master, permission to take 15 men in the captured polacca to seek them out.

Towill succeeded in getting all three polaccas safely back to Malta, where the court condemned them as legal prizes containing French goods.

Reggio surrendered on 10 July; two days later Crafty, two Neapolitan gunboats, and three armed boats from Madras joined Amphion.

[16][17] In October 1806 Ball sent Spencer to negotiate with the Dey of Algiers for the release of some Maltese whom the Algerians had enslaved before Malta became a British possession.

As Spencer was about to leave, his mission unsuccessful, the Dey, expressing his wish to be friendly with Britain, released 30 men and two ladies who had been slaves for more than 15 years.

At a later date, Spencer received a second piece of plate, this one worth 40 guineas, in appreciation of his efforts to protect Malta's trade.

The seas were too rough for Crafty to be able to launch her boats so Spencer waved to draw his crew's attention, and then, stripping off his coats and boots, swam out to her.

She sailed towards the Barbary coast and on 9 March anchored in a small bay at north of Tetuan, awaiting a favourable wind.

His attacker was about to stab Spencer when Crafty's master, who was loading a musket, saw what was happening and fired the iron ramrod through the man, killing him instantly.