sold Drake to his friend Jonathan Williams, who handed her over the next year to Jean Peltier-Dudoyer in Nantes. In July 1779, she left Nantes for Brest, under captain Jean-Baptiste Cotton de Chaucy, having been chartered by the French to escort a 10-vessel convoy between Brest and the Antillas, assisted by the frigate Fier-Rodrigue. The latter was unexpectedly requisitioned by the French Navy and the convoy was cancelled. Still under charter to the French, between March 1780 and January 1781 Drake, under Captain J. B. Cotton de Chauncy, made two trips to North America and the West Indies, transporting Jean-Baptiste Rochambeau’s troops in Charles de Ternay's squadron and returning to France with messages for the King. At the beginning of 1781, Jean Peltier Dudoyer prepared five ships in Nantes for the Dutch East India Company, to protect the Dutch Cape Colony in southern Africa against an anticipated attack by England. The Drakes captain, Marc Antoine Fauvet, was at the Cape in November 1781, joining de Pernier’s squadron whose mission was to bring victuals and troops to the fleet of Pierre André de Suffren at Isle de France (Maurice Island). The Drake returned to the Cape on 20 May 1782. There, on 2 September 1782, she was sold to the French government by Robert Pitot for 849,000 livres and incorporated into the French Navy. She sailed again to Isle de France in November, left on 1 December 1782, and arrived at Trincomalee in Ceylon (modern Sri Lanka) on 10 March 1783. In the meantime, peace was declared,news of it reaching the East Indian Fleet on 29 June. Suffren sailed home, but de Pernier stayed in the Indian Ocean with five ships-of-the-line and some frigates and sloops-of-war. From December 1784 to February 1786, the Drake, captained by Pierre Arnoult Deshayes, was sent by Governor Marquis de Bussy from Pondicherry, India, to Bago, Burma, to assist another royal flûte, the Baleine. She was being detained by the local authorities, and Deshayes was to attempt to persuade them to release her. By the autumn of 1785 she had been released, as it is known that she departed Isle of France on 24 July 1785 and arrived at Lorient, and then at Rochefort, being decommissioned there on 28 March 1786. As for the Drake, her departure from Bago, which was scheduled for March 1785, was delayed by eleven months, first because of a bill of