HMS Pandour explained

Four ships of the Royal Navy have borne the name HMS Pandour, after the Pandurs, an 18th-century force of Croatian soldiers (e.g. Trenck's Pandurs), who served the Habsburg monarchy as skirmishers and who had a reputation for brutality:

• HMS Pandour (1795) was the French 14-gun brig, launched in 1780, that the British captured in 1795 and renamed HMS Pandour or Pandora; she foundered in the North Sea in 1797.
• HMS Pandour, was the French 16-gun privateer ship-sloop, which captured in March 1798.The Royal Navy renamed her HMS Pandour, but never commissioned her. In 1800 she was renamed HMS Wolf and was broken up in 1802.
• HMS Pandour was the Dutch 44-gun frigate, launched in 1784, that the British captured in 1799, fitted out and transferred to the Transport Board in 1800, commissioned in 1803, converted to a floating battery in 1804, and transferred to Customs as a store hulk in 1805. The Admiralty offered her for sale at Portsmouth in May 1814.
• HMS Pandour was a 22-gun, begun under the name Pandour in 1805, but renamed before being launched in 1806; she was broken up in 1816.

References

• • Book: Winfield, Rif. British Warships in the Age of Sail 1793 - 1817: Design, Construction, Careers and Fates. Seaforth. 2008. 978-1861762467.