deserters. The boarding party seized four deserters from the Royal Navy–three Americans and one British-born sailor–and took them to Halifax, where the British sailor, Jenkin Ratford, was hanged for desertion. The Americans were initially sentenced to 500 lashes, but had their sentence commuted; Britain also offered to return them to America. The incident caused severe political repercussions in the United States, and nearly led to the two nations going to war. Leopard escorted a convoy from Portsmouth on 6 May 1808. Leopard left the convoy on 28 July at . She then was part of the convoy assigned to Josias Rowley in the Mauritius campaign of 1809–11 in the Indian Ocean. Fate In 1812, Leopard had her guns removed and was converted to a troopship. On 28 June 1814 she was en route from Britain to Quebec, carrying a contingent of 475 Royal Scots Guardsmen, when she grounded on Anticosti Island in heavy fog. Leopard was destroyed, but all on board survived. Leopard in fiction In Patrick O'Brian's novel Desolation Island, the fifth book of the Aubrey–Maturin series, Jack Aubrey commands Leopard on a cruise through the Atlantic and Indian oceans after the Chesapeake-Leopard Affair, a voyage which included the sinking of the fictional Dutch ship of the line Waakzaamheid, and a disastrous collision with an iceberg. In the sixth book, The Fortune of War, the ship is left at a British station in the Dutch East Indies, unable to support her complement of guns. She is called the "horrible old Leopard" in the fourth book in the series The Mauritius Command, and in other books in the series, and ends its days as a store ship sailing from the English Channel to the Baltic. Game developer Lucas Pope based the layout of the titular ship in his game Return of the Obra Dinn on the layout of HMS Leopard. References Bibliography War of 1812 ships of the United Kingdom Shipwrecks in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence Maritime incidents in 1806 Maritime incidents in 1814 1790 ships Ships of the line of the Royal Navy Ships built in Sheerness