The French corvette Bacchante was launched in 1795 as the second of the four-vessel Serpente class of corvettes. She served for almost two years as a privateer, before returning to the service of the French Navy. After HMS Endymion captured her in 1803, the Royal Navy took her in under her existing name as a 20-gun post ship. Bacchante served in the West Indies, where she captured several armed Spanish and French vessels before the Navy sold her in 1809.