Enterprise served throughout the American Revolutionary War as cruiser and convoy escort.
On June 7, 1780, Enterprise, under command of Captain Patrick Leslie, was at anchor in the Bay of Gibraltar with other ships of the Royal Navy. At about 1:30am, Enterprise saw some vessels drifting toward the harbor. When they came within hailing distance, the seaman on watch called a challenge. The six drifting vessels were set afire by their crews, who made their escape in small boats, leaving the flaming hulks drifting toward the British ships. Captain Leslie fired a three-gun salvo to warn the other ships, cut his anchor lines to let Enterprise drift away from the hulks, and then opened fire on the hulks in an attempt to sink them. With the Spanish fleet waiting just outside the harbor for any British ships trying to escape, the British seamen took to small boats and, at great peril to their lives, boarded the flaming hulks to attach lines to pull them away from their own ships and burn themselves out.
After this action and continued service in the Mediterranean, she sailed on April 27, 1782, for the Leeward Islands in the Caribbean, where she captured the privateer Mohawk.
Enterprise was decommissioned in 1784. From 1790 until she was broken up in August 1807, she was stationed in port in British home waters as a receiving ship, monitoring the arrival of foreign vessels.
In 1791, during the war scare known as the Spanish Armament, she was hulked as a receiving ship for impressed men at the Tower of London.
In 1803, another Enterprize-class frigate, HMS Resource (built at Rotherhithe in 1778) was renamed Enterprize, and joined her sister ship at the Tower as another receiving ship to accommodate men taken up by another press at the end of the Peace of Amiens and the outbreak of the Napoleonic War.
In 1806 the original Enterprise was taken to Deptford and broken up in 1807. The second Enterprise, ex-Resource, was broken up in 1816.
General Characteristics
See HMS Enterprise for other Navy ships of this name.