The third HMS Shannon was a 36-gun Perseverance-class frigate of the British Royal Navy built at Frindsbury on the River Medway on the Thames Estuary.

She was attached to the Channel fleet and spent the next few months under her captain, Edward Leveson-Gower, on patrol off the Cape La Hogue searching for French coastal shipping and privateers attempting to slip out of the Normandy port of Cherbourg.

Efforts overnight to lighten Shannon succeeded in that eventually she floated, but she was so full of water that she grounded again and it was evident that she was lost.

Some French fishing boats led by Ensign Lacroix took possession of Shannon, and saw that her hull was so damaged that she would be impossible to refloat.

[3] Merlin stood back into shore on the 16th and at 11.30am dispatched two boats of marines and sailors to destroy Shannon to prevent the French from salvaging her guns and stores.