Command
In the following three months Beresford was able to demonstrate his naval abilities multiple times, first by protecting a convoy against two larger French warships, then by rescuing the grounded 38-gun frigate HMS Thetis in December, and finally by capturing a powerful French privateer. Murray rewarded him for these deeds with command of the 28-gun frigate HMS Hussar with the acting rank of post-captain in February 1795. Beresford was then sent, under the orders of Captain Alexander Cochrane of Thetis, to attack a group of five French store ships known to be in Hampton Roads. These store ships were heavily armed and some were en flute frigates. The two British ships found the French on 17 May 1795 and engaged them, capturing two of the ships, Prévoyante and Raison. In reward for the action Murray transferred Beresford to command the larger Prévoyante, and Beresford used his personal funds to have her refitted as a 40-gun frigate at Halifax, using the captures he subsequently made in the ship to reimburse himself. However, the Admiralty decided that she was too large a vessel for him and instead appointed him to the smaller Raison despite the exertion he had put into Prévoyante. Raison was taken into service with the Royal Navy as a 30-gun frigate.
Some time after this Beresford was sent in Raison to take £200,000 of specie from Boston to Halifax. On 25 August 1796 he was intercepted by the much larger French frigate Vengeance while much of his crew were away securing an American merchant ship as a prize. The French ship chased Raison in a running fight, but after being forced to drop back having been damaged, Vengeance then lost Beresford's ship when he escaped into a bank of fog. Having completed the delivery of the specie, Beresford continued on station. In March 1797 he captured a valuable Spanish merchant ship off the Bahamas and destroyed another against the shore by tricking the enemy ships into thinking Raison was a ship of the line. Having made several other prizes in the following months, he was sent as escort to a homeward-bound convoy at the end of the year, and upon reaching Britain Raison was paid off.
At the start of 1798 Beresford was given his next command, the 32-gun frigate HMS Unite. He was again sent to serve on the Leeward Islands Station. In the following five years he participated in the captures of Surinam, St Martin, St Bartholomew, St Thomas, St John, and Santa Cruz. At some point during this period he transferred commands to the 38-gun frigate HMS Diana, and he served as senior officer of frigates under Rear-Admiral Sir John Duckworth in 1801. Just before the Peace of Amiens began he returned to England as escort to a convoy of 200 ships. Diana was then paid off, and Beresford stayed on land until the peace ended in 1803. At this point he was given command of the 40-gun frigate HMS Virginie to serve in the North Sea. He did so for around a year before the strains on serving in such bad conditions paid their toll on Virginie, and she was deemed unseaworthy.
