Chardon was a 379-ton (French; "of load") whaler that Aget, Kenny and Coffyn purchased in 1787 and commissioned at Dunkirk that same year. Benjamin Hussey purchased her in 1789 and renamed her Judith. She left Dunkirk in September 1792 for the whale fisheries of Walvis Bay. There the 20-gun armed whaler Liverpool captured her in July 1793, after the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars. Judith's own crew recaptured her; during the night Paul Ray, her captain, cut the cables to her anchor and sailed away. By August she was at New Bedford.