She had three names and served three masters, and in the end none of them could save her. The vessel that began life as the civilian Sir Charles Grey -- named for a British general who conquered half the Caribbean -- was purchased by the Royal Navy in Bermuda in 1795, rechristened HMS Spencer, and sent to patrol waters she already knew as a privateer and hired armed vessel. Five years later, to avoid confusion with a newly launched seventy-four-gun ship of the line, the Navy renamed her again: HMS Lilly. Under that name she would fight, be captured, fight again under a French flag, and finally cease to exist in a catastrophic explosion witnessed by the very ship that would one day tell her story.
Captain Francis Pender arrived at Bermuda on 11 August 1795 and promptly purchased two vessels for the Navy. One became Spencer, the former Sir Charles Grey, a privateer that had already served as a hired armed vessel for the Crown. She was named for Charles Grey, 1st Earl Grey, the general whose Caribbean campaigns had reshaped the region's colonial map. Commander Thomas Hurd of Bermuda initially commissioned her, but Hurd was occupied with hydrographic survey work -- the detailed charting of coastlines and shallows that made naval operations possible -- and Pender replaced him with Lieutenant Andrew F. Evans. Spencer was a sixteen-gun brig-sloop, modest in size but Bermuda-built, which meant cedar-planked, fast, and well suited to the shallow reef-studded waters where she would spend much of her career.
Spencer earned her keep early. On 4 May 1796, sailing in company with Esperance and Bonetta, she spotted a suspicious vessel and gave chase while her companions pursued two others. Spencer sailed south-southeast, the other ships southwest by west, and they lost sight of each other entirely -- a reminder of how easily contact was broken in the age of sail. Spencer captured the French gun-brig Volcan on her own. Command shifted through several hands: Evans to Dunbar in 1798, then Joseph Spear around September 1799. In May 1800, the Royal Navy launched a new seventy-four-gun ship also named Spencer, and the brig-sloop had to yield her name. She became Lilly. Under Spear, she served in the Bahamas and at Halifax, where the Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia requested a naval vessel to interrupt American contraband trade. It was quiet, necessary work -- the unglamorous patrols that kept colonial commerce moving.
Off the coast of Georgia on the afternoon of 14 July 1804, Lilly sighted two vessels. She sailed toward them, but by sunset could only make out a ship towing a smaller prize. In the morning, the larger vessel dropped her tow and bore down to engage. What followed was methodical and merciless. The enemy stayed off Lilly's stern, using long guns at ranges her carronades could not reach. French fire killed Commander William Compton and shredded Lilly's rigging until she could barely maneuver. Lieutenant Samuel Fowler took command and wanted to surrender, but the warrant officers objected. When the ships finally came alongside and Lilly unleashed a broadside, the French returned fire and killed Fowler too. British sailors repelled several boarding attempts before the French finally prevailed. Lilly's butcher's bill: both commanding officers dead, sixteen men wounded. The victor was Dame Ambert, a sixteen-gun privateer -- herself a former British packet captured and turned against her makers.
The French fitted Lilly out as a privateer and renamed her General Ernouf, after Jean Augustin Ernouf, the governor of Guadeloupe. Under commander Giraud Lapointe, she returned to the same waters as a hunter. In July 1804, she twice encountered the British letter of marque Britannia but declined to engage. By August, Lapointe sensed an opportunity and attacked -- only to have Britannia repulse two boarding attempts and leave both ships with shattered masts and rigging. General Ernouf withdrew into the dark. She later sheltered at the Saintes near Guadeloupe, where shore batteries protected her from a British cutting-out expedition that ended in complete failure. For a while, the former Lilly seemed to have found a second life as a French raider, operating from the same Caribbean islands she had once patrolled for the Crown.
That second life ended on 20 March 1805. HMS Renard -- another captured French privateer serving the Royal Navy -- sighted General Ernouf to the northwest and gave chase. General Ernouf shortened sail and prepared to fight. At 2:20 in the afternoon, Renard opened fire. Thirty-five minutes later, General Ernouf appeared to catch fire. Ten minutes after that, she exploded. Of the 160 men aboard, only 55 survived, pulled from the water by Renard's crew. She had been seven days out of Basseterre, hunting the homeward-bound Jamaica fleet. Before the explosion, General Ernouf had already suffered twenty to thirty killed and wounded; Renard's casualties were nine wounded. The ship that began as Sir Charles Grey in Bermuda, served as Spencer and Lilly under the Royal Navy, and hunted as General Ernouf under the French tricolor, ended as wreckage scattered across the Caribbean. Two former French privateers met that afternoon -- one wearing British colors, one French -- and only one sailed away.
The coordinates 21.23N, 71.50W place this story near the Turks and Caicos Islands, close to the historic Caribbean shipping lanes. HMS Spencer/Lilly operated across a wide range from Bermuda to Halifax to the Georgia coast to the Leeward Islands. Her final destruction as General Ernouf occurred somewhere in these Caribbean waters. Nearest airports include Providenciales International (MBPV) and JAGS McCartney International on Grand Turk (MBGT). From altitude, these waters reveal the deep channels between island banks that made them both vital trade routes and prime hunting grounds for privateers.