HMS Lys was a 24-gun sloop-of-war operated by the Royal Navy between 1745 and 1748, during the War of the Austrian Succession. Originally built as the French privateer Le Lis at Saint-Malo in 1745, she was designed for swift raiding and privateering. Her dimensions included a length of 105 feet 9 inches (32.2 meters), a keel length of 82 feet (25.0 meters), a beam of 29 feet (8.8 meters), and a hold depth of 10 feet 9 inches (3.3 meters). While her armament as a privateer is not recorded, upon her refit for Royal Navy service, she was equipped with 20 six-pounder cannons on her upper deck and four three-pounder guns on the quarterdeck, with a crew complement of around 160 officers and ratings. Le Lis’s active service began after her capture by HMS Hampton Court on December 18, 1745, off the English Channel, where her crew surrendered to the 70-gun ship of the line. She was brought into Portsmouth on December 31 and purchased by the Admiralty in January 1746, subsequently renamed HMS Lys. She underwent fitting at a cost of £2,575 from January to March 1746. Although commissioned under Captain William Bateman, she did not see immediate active service until Captain Thomas Knowler took command in August 1747. Lys was then assigned to hunt privateers off Dunkirk, operating alongside HMS Weazel. Her most notable engagement occurred in April 1747, when she, in company with Weazel, captured the 10-gun French privateer La Charlotte. This vessel was regarded as a significant prize due to its valuable cargo of trade goods, which was brought into the Thames at Nore and handed over to authorities. Following the end of the war with France in 1748, HMS Lys was deemed surplus to requirements. She was decommissioned at Woolwich Dockyard, her guns and crew removed, and was ultimately sold into private ownership in April 1749 for £451. Her service exemplifies the typical role of small warships tasked with hunting privateers and protecting merchant shipping during wartime.

This description has been generated using GPT-4.1-NANO based on the Vessel's wikidata information and then modified by ShipIndex.org staff.