Pickering
(RC: dp. 187; 1. 77'; b. 20'; dr. 9'; cpl. 70; n. 14 4-pdr.)

Brig Pickering WM built at Newburyport, Mass. in 1798 for the Revenue Service, Captain Jonathan Chapman USRCS in command. Taken into the Navy in July at the outbreak of the Quasi-War with France, she departed Boston on her first cruise 22 August.

In 1799 and the early part of 1800 she was with Commodore Barry's squadron in the West IndiQ. Lieutenant Edward Preble commanded Pickering from January through June 1799. It was during this period that she fought a notable enga~ement with the French privateer L'Egypte Conquise. The Frenchman was well fitted out and manned to eapture Pickeriny. Against her 14 9-pdrs., 4 6 pdrs., and crew of 250, the eutter had only 14 4-pdrs. and seventy men. But after a nine-hour battle, the larger ship surrendered.

Pickering was permanently transferred to the Navy 20 May and Master Commandant Benjamin Hillar, USN assumed command in June. She continued to cruise in the West Indies, and before her return to the United States she captured four French privateers

She departed Boston 10 June 1800. Ordered to join the squadron of Commodore Thomas Truxton on the Guadeloupe

Station, West Indies, she sailed from Newcastle, Del. 20 August, but was never heard from again. She is supposed to have been lost with all hands in a gale that September.