Several vessels have been named ''Spy'': * After the Royal Navy sold in 1773, between 1773 and 1780 she became the transport ''Spy''. * was launched in Liverpool in 1777. She traded locally until 1781 when her owners renamed her ''Spy'' and placed her in the

slave trade Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...

. The French Navy captured her in 1782 in the West Indies as she was arriving to deliver her cargo of enslaved people. * was built in France in 1780, almost surely under another name, and taken in prize. The British

East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and Sout ...

(EIC) purchased her in 1781 and used her for almost two years as a fast

packet Packet may refer to: * A small container or pouch ** Packet (container), a small single use container ** Cigarette packet ** Sugar packet * Network packet, a formatted unit of data carried by a packet-mode computer network * Packet radio, a form ...

vessel and cruiser based in

St Helena Saint Helena () is a British overseas territory located in the South Atlantic Ocean. It is a remote volcanic tropical island west of the coast of south-western Africa, and east of Rio de Janeiro in South America. It is one of three constitu ...

. It then sold her and she became a London-based

slave ship Slave ships were large cargo ships specially built or converted from the 17th to the 19th century for transporting slaves. Such ships were also known as "Guineamen" because the trade involved human trafficking to and from the Guinea coast i ...

, making two voyages carrying enslaved people in the

triangular trade Triangular trade or triangle trade is trade between three ports or regions. Triangular trade usually evolves when a region has export commodities that are not required in the region from which its major imports come. It has been used to offset ...

, in the

Middle Passage The Middle Passage was the stage of the Atlantic slave trade in which millions of enslaved Africans were transported to the Americas as part of the triangular slave trade. Ships departed Europe for African markets with manufactured goods (firs ...

from West Africa to the West Indies. next, she became a

whaler A whaler or whaling ship is a specialized vessel, designed or adapted for whaling: the catching or processing of whales. Terminology The term ''whaler'' is mostly historic. A handful of nations continue with industrial whaling, and one, Jap ...

, making seven whaling voyages between 1786 and 1795. She was probably wrecked in August 1795 on a voyage as a government transport. * was a 16-gun French

privateer A privateer is a private person or ship that engages in maritime warfare under a commission of war. Since robbery under arms was a common aspect of seaborne trade, until the early 19th century all merchant ships carried arms. A sovereign or deleg ...

corvette launched at

Nantes Nantes (, , ; Gallo: or ; ) is a city in Loire-Atlantique on the Loire, from the Atlantic coast. The city is the sixth largest in France, with a population of 314,138 in Nantes proper and a metropolitan area of nearly 1 million inhabit ...

. The British captured her in 1793 and named her HMS ''Espion''. The French recaptured her in 1794 and took her into service as ''Espion''. The British recaptured her in 1795, but there being another ''Espion'' in service by then, the British renamed their capture HMS ''Spy''. She served under that name until the Navy sold her in 1801. ''Spy'' then became a

, a merchantman to South America, and privateer again. The French captured her in mid-1805 and sent her into Guadeloupe.

See also