HMS Endymion was a 40-gun fifth rate that served in the French Revolutionary Wars, the Napoleonic Wars, the War of 1812 and during the First Opium War. She was built to the lines of the French prize Pomone captured in 1794. Due to her exceptional handling and sailing properties, the Severn-class frigates were built to her lines, although the gunports were rearranged to mount an extra pair of guns per side, the ships were made of softwood and were not built until nearly the end of the Napoleonic Wars.
HMS Endymion (right) exchanges broadsides with USS President (left)
Sketch of Rockall by T. Harvey, in 1810
Basil Hall landing on Rockall in 1811
USS President (left foreground) having surrendered, HMS Endymion (right foreground) is shown without her fore topmast, due to damage she sustained during her duel with the American ship.
USS President was a wooden-hulled, three-masted heavy frigate of the United States Navy, nominally rated at 44 guns; she was launched in April 1800 from a shipyard in New York City. President was one of the original six frigates whose construction the Naval Act of 1794 had authorized, and she was the last to be completed. The name "President" was among ten names submitted to President George Washington by Secretary of War Timothy Pickering in March of 1795 for the frigates that were to be constructed. Joshua Humphreys designed these frigates to be the young Navy's capital ships, and so President and her sisters were larger and more heavily armed and built than standard frigates of the period. Forman Cheeseman, and later Christian Bergh were in charge of her construction. Her first duties with the newly formed United States Navy were to provide protection for American merchant shipping during the Quasi War with France and to engage in a punitive expedition against the Barbary pirates in the First Barbary War.
President rides out a storm at anchor.
Mediterranean Sea area of operation (modern-day political boundaries are shown).
President fires on Little Belt
A cannon explodes during the pursuit of HMS Belvidera