HMS Minerva was a 38-gun fifth-rate Royal Navy frigate. The first of four Minerva-class frigates, she was launched on 3 June 1780, and commissioned soon thereafter. In 1798, she was renamed Pallas and employed as a troopship. She was broken up in 1803.
Drawing of the outline of the Minerva
Admiral Sir William Cornwallis, was a Royal Navy officer. He was the brother of Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis, British commander at the siege of Yorktown. Cornwallis took part in a number of decisive battles including the siege of Louisbourg in 1758, when he was 14, and the Battle of the Saintes but is best known as a friend of Lord Nelson and as the commander-in-chief of the Channel Fleet during the Napoleonic Wars. He is depicted in the Horatio Hornblower novel, Hornblower and the Hotspur.
Admiral William Cornwallis after a Portrait by Daniel Gardner, Published in the Naval Chronicle
Newlands Manor, Hampshire, Milford, family seat, c. 1900
Battle of Grenada 1781 Jean-François Hue
The Battle of the Saintes, 12 April 1782: surrender of the Ville de Paris by Thomas Whitcombe, painted 1783, shows Hood's HMS Barfleur, centre, attacking the French flagship Ville de Paris, right