Vengeance was one of two frigates built to Pierre Degay's design of 1793, initially ordered as Bonne Foi, and launched on 8 November 1794.

[3] Within the month, on 25 August, Vengeance again engaged the British when she chased the 26-gun Raison, under Captain John Poo Beresford, to the west of the Gulf of Maine.

After the vessels had exchanged fire for two hours, foggy weather helped Raison escape, but not before she had suffered three killed and six wounded.

Vengeance was bound for France under Capitaine de Vaisseau François Pitot, carrying passengers and specie, and initially attempted to outrun Constellation.

[10] After Pitot refused a request to surrender, the two began to exchange broadsides at (15°17′N 66°04′W / 15.283°N 66.067°W / 15.283; -66.067),[11] with Vengeance aiming high to damage Constellation's rigging.

Vengeance's and Constellation's guns eventually fell silent; Toll reports that Pitot may even have struck his colours but Constellation had suffered considerable damage to her masts and rigging, eventually losing her main mast at the conclusion of the action around half past midnight.

[12] The Americans believed Vengeance had sunk, but her captain actually had managed to sail her as far as Curaçao, where he ran her onto the beach to prevent her from sinking on 6 February.

[14] Then on 20 August 1800 the frigate HMS Seine, under the command of Captain David Milne, attacked her just before Midnight in the Mona Passage.

[15] Vengeance, still under the command of Pitot, sustained worse damage and surrendered after about an hour and a half of hard fighting in the morning of 21 August.

After Galgo foundered in 1800, with heavy loss of life, the Admiralty issued an order stopping the purchase of captured enemy warships.

[25] 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.