HMS Braak was an 18-gun brig-sloop of the Royal Navy. She was launched at Rotterdam in 1781 and initially served with the Dutch Republic. The British seized her, in Britain, after the Dutch entry into the French Revolutionary Wars, and took her into the Royal Navy. She served briefly with the British before capsizing off the North American coast. She was subsequently the focus of a number of salvage efforts. Dutch career The cutter De Braak was launched as a "botter", or vessel of the 8th Charter. Sources also give her name as Baak, or Brak. She was part of a Mediterranean fleet based at the French port of Toulon. By the 1790s Braak was in the Caribbean, and was present at the defence against the French of Willemstad, part of the Dutch colony at Curaçao, in 1793. By late 1794 she was ordered to escort a convoy of East Indiamen to Batavia in the Netherlands East Indies. En route she called at the English port of Falmouth, unaware that the French had since invaded the Netherlands and proclaimed the Batavian Republic as a client state, compelling the Dutch to declare war on the British. On the arrival of the convoy at falmouth, the Royal Navy seized the 26 merchantmen and six warships of the convoy, including De Braak. A boarding party from the sloop-of-war took over De Braak. Forty-six Royal Navy vessels that were at Plymouth shared in the prize money. British career The Royal Navy took De Braak into service as HMS Braak and re-rigged her as a brig-sloop. She was initially commissioned under Commander James Drew on 13 June 1797. A storm at the end of the year dismasted her. On the completion of repairs, she returned to service in February 1798 and was assigned to escort a convoy to the Virginia Capes. She sailed for Halifax, Nova Scotia, on 17 March 1798. On 2 April, whilst off the Azores, she became separated from the rest of the ships. Towards the end of the month she fell in with and captured the Spanish ship Dom Francisco Xavier, which was carrying a cargo of copper, cocoa, and other goods and reportedly was worth some £160,000 in prize money. Braak arrived in company with Dom Francisco Xavier in Delaware Bay on 25 May 1798, and took on a pilot, Andrew Allen, from Cape Henlopen in Delaware. In an exuberant