HMS Lively was a 38-gun fifth rate frigate

Frigate

A frigate is any of several types of warship, the term having been used for ships of various sizes and roles over the last few centuries.In the 17th century, the term was used for any warship built for speed and maneuverability, the description often used being "frigate-built"...

 of the Royal Navy

Royal Navy

The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...

, launched on 23 July 1804 at Woolwich Dockyard

Woolwich Dockyard

Woolwich Dockyard was an English naval dockyard founded by King Henry VIII in 1512 to build his flagship Henri Grâce à Dieu , the largest ship of its day....

, and commissioned later that month. She was the prototype of the eponymous Lively class

Lively class frigate

The Lively class sailing frigates were a series of sixteen ships built to a 1799 design by Sir William Rule, which served in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars....

 of 18-pounder frigates, designed by the Surveyor of the Navy

Surveyor of the Navy

The Surveyor to the Navy was a civilian officer in the Royal Navy. He was a member of the Navy Board from the inauguration of that body in 1546, and held overall responsibility for the design of British warships, although until 1745 the actual design work for warships built at each Royal Dockyard...

, Sir William Rule. It was probably the most successful British frigate design of the Napoleonic Wars, to which fifteen more sisterships would be ordered between 1803 and 1812.

In October of that year, under the command of Captain (later Vice-Admiral Sir) Graham Eden Hammond

Sir Graham Hamond, 2nd Baronet

Admiral of the Fleet Sir Graham Eden Hamond, 2nd Baronet GCB was a Royal Navy officer who served during the French Revolutionary Wars and Napoleonic Wars....

, she joined a squadron commanded by Graham Moore

Graham Moore

Admiral Sir Graham Moore, GCB, GCMG was a British sailor and a career officer in the Royal Navy. He was the younger brother of General Sir John Moore.-Naval career:...

 consisting of four frigates, which intercepted and captured

Action of 5 October 1804

The Battle of Cape Santa Maria was a naval action that took place off the southern Portuguese coast, in which a British squadron under the command of Commodore Graham Moore attacked a Spanish squadron commanded by Brigadier Don José de Bustamante y Guerra, in time of peace, without...

 a treasure fleet

Spanish treasure fleet

The Spanish treasure fleets was a convoy system adopted by the Spanish Empire from 1566 to 1790...

 of four frigates carrying bullion from South America back to Spain, which was, at that time, neutral. In the action that followed one of the Spanish frigates, Clara struck her colours to Lively.

These events would later be fictionalised in Patrick O'Brian

Patrick O'Brian

Patrick O'Brian, CBE , born Richard Patrick Russ, was an English novelist and translator, best known for his Aubrey–Maturin series of novels set in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars and centred on the friendship of English Naval Captain Jack Aubrey and the Irish–Catalan physician Stephen...

's novel Post Captain

Post Captain (novel)

Post Captain is a 1972 historical naval novel by Patrick O'Brian. It is second in the Aubrey–Maturin series of stories set in the early-nineteenth century, concerning the adventures of Captain Jack Aubrey and naval surgeon Stephen Maturin...

, in which Captain Aubrey is in temporary command of Lively.

In March 1805, she was attached to Sir James Craig's

James Henry Craig

General Sir James Henry Craig KB was a British military officer and colonial administrator.-Early life and military service:...

 military expedition to Italy. Along with , Craig's flagship, and HMS Ambuscade

HMS Ambuscade (1773)

HMS Ambuscade was a 32-gun fifth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy, built at Depford in 1773.During the Revolutionary wars, as she blockaded Rochefort, she was captured in the Action of 14 December 1798 and brought in French service as Embuscade....

, Lively escorted the fleet of transports to Malta.

On 26 August 1810, while escorting another convoy to Malta, HMS Lively ran aground on rocks near Point Coura, Malta

Malta

Malta , officially known as the Republic of Malta , is a Southern European country consisting of an archipelago situated in the centre of the Mediterranean, south of Sicily, east of Tunisia and north of Libya, with Gibraltar to the west and Alexandria to the east.Malta covers just over in...

, and was wrecked; no lives were lost.