Three years later, on 1 June 1789, while she was under the command of Major Magnus Hansson, and belonged to the Gothenburg Squadron, she was captured by the Russians in a complicated action that created an interesting legal and diplomatic aftermath.

However, when the capital ships were in place and also opened fire, Commander Hansson, after consultation with his senior officers, concluded that nothing more could be achieved by further bloodshed and hauled down his colours.

According to a testimony from the Danish/Norwegian pilot, Commander Hansson, right after hauling down his flag, boarded the Russian flagship claiming the attack as a crime of war.

The Russian newspapers and authorities made the outmost of the capture, spreading the news that Venus had hauled down her colours to the 22-gun cutter Merkuriy.

Upon returning from captivity, Commander Major Hansson was placed on trial at the royal court in Stockholm in July 1791 for the loss of his ship.

The relatively mild sentence of loss of a half-year salary for positioning his majesty’s frigate Venus into a position where he could not escape to the open sea indicated that the court did not consider the loss itself as a crime and accepted the fact that Major Hansson should have been able to expect a safe haven on neutral waters, and that his defence of the ship had been sufficient until the point of the arrival of the full Russian squadron.