The largest British merchant ship, Windham commanded by John Stewart, took advantage of a disrupted French formation to attack the frigate Manche. The two ships fought for an hour before Manche disengaged and Windham fled. The other two Indiamen declined to join the action and offered only token resistance to the more powerful French warships before surrendering. Windham evaded the French pursuit for five days before also being captured by the French flagship, Vénus.
Hamelin's force began transporting their captured prizes back to the distant French base on Île de France. A month after the battle, the squadron encountered a winter hurricane that heavily damaged several ships. Vénus only survived with the co-operation of the British prisoners she was carrying, including Stewart, who helped bring the ship safely to port. With the ships scattered after the storm, Windham was recaptured by a patrolling British frigate within a few miles of the French island. The other French ships and two East Indiamen successfully reached Île de France. Stewart and his crew were subsequently released in recognition of their assistance during the hurricane.
The action was one of three losses of East Indiamen convoys during 1809, which prompted the British to substantially increase their naval presence in the Indian Ocean during 1810.
Following the decisive Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, the British Royal Navy held naval superiority in the seas around Europe. The few remaining French ships of the line were blockaded in their ports. Faster French frigates could sometimes evade the blockades; their combination of speed and firepower made them ideal for commerce raiding. The British economy relied upon sea trade with its distant empire, which was impossible for the Royal Navy to defend everywhere. Particularly profitable was the EIC's shipping to and from British India. To protect this trade, the EIC carried it in East Indiamen, a type of large armed merchant vessel. East Indiamen had enough resilience, firepower and crew to fight off pirates or small naval vessels, but were not warships and could not match a frigate in combat.[1]
In late 1808, the French Navy despatched a naval squadron of four large frigates from France to attack British trade routes in the East Indies, particularly with India. The goal was to damage the British economy and force the Royal Navy to send more ships to the Indian Ocean, thereby weakening their forces elsewhere. Command of the squadron was given to Commodore Jacques Hamelin, a skilled officer with substantial experience in frigate actions and commerce raiding.[1] The ships were to be maintained and supplied from two French islands in the western Indian Ocean: Île de France (modern Mauritius) and Île Bonaparte (Réunion).[2] These bases were thousands of miles from India and surrounded by open ocean, so Hamelin would need to sail substantial distances to find his targets.[citation needed]
After arriving in the Indian Ocean, Hamelin dispersed his frigates in the Bay of Bengal, ordering them to hunt merchant vessels. In spring 1809, the most successful of the French frigates was Caroline, which intercepted a convoy of East Indiamen in the action of 31 May 1809. After a brief resistance by the larger vessels, one of the East Indiamen escaped, but two others were captured and brought to Île Bonaparte.[3] The Royal Navy forces in the region were under the command of Admiral Albemarle Bertie, based at the Cape of Good Hope Station (located at Simon's Town, now in South Africa). Bertie gathered a squadron of frigates, led by Commodore Josias Rowley in HMS Raisonnable, in roughly equivalent[vague] numbers to Hamelin's force.[3] Bertie ordered Rowley to blockade the two French islands and reconnoitre them for weaknesses that could be exploited in a future invasion. Rowley's first significant operation was the Raid on Saint Paul (a port on Île Bonaparte) on 21 September 1809, which captured Caroline, recovered her two East Indiamen prizes, and burned their cargoes in the French warehouses.[1]
Hamelin's cruise and Stewart's convoy
In July 1809, Hamelin departed Île de France in the frigate Vénus, accompanied the frigate Manche (under Captain Jean Dornal de Guy) and the corvetteCréole. The frigates both carried at least 40 cannon and the corvette carried 14. All three ships were crewed by a full complement of experienced sailors, reinforced from the pool of unemployed men stranded on Île de France by the British blockade.[4] The frigate Bellone departed a month later and operated separately.[citation needed]
Hamelin led his small squadron towards the Bay of Bengal. On the way there, Vénus captured the EIC armed ship Orient on 26 July. Hamelin then turned east in search of more British shipping to attack, capturing several small merchant vessels off the Nicobar Islands.[5] He then turned south, towards the small trading port of Tappanooly (modern Sibolga) on Sumatra. On 10 October, the squadron raided Tappanooly, capturing its small British population and razing the town.[1] Hamelin then turned north, back towards the Bay of Bengal.[citation needed]
Months earlier, a convoy of three East Indiamen – Windham under captain John Stewart, Charlton under captain Charles Mortlock and United Kingdom under captain William D'Esterre – had departed Britain on a voyage to Calcutta, with Stewart in overall command.[6] They were to pick up a valuable cargo of trade goods in India before returning to Britain. On this outwards journey, their main cargo was over 200 passengers, primarily soldiers for the army of the EIC.[citation needed]
Stewart's three vessels had cargo capacities of approximately 800 tons burthen. They carried between 20 and 30 small cannon each, but were not warships: their crews were not trained to military standards and their guns were not as powerful as those carried on naval vessels. A large proportion of the crews were lascars, who were considered unreliable in combat.[7] On 11 November, these ships encountered HMS Rattlesnake, a British sloop, which warned them that French naval vessels were operating in the area. Stewart began rehearsing Windham's gunnery in case he should meet them.[8]
Engagement
At 06:00 on 18 November 1809, with the sailing season almost at an end, Hamelin sighted Stewart's convoy[where?] travelling northwards and gave chase. Ship for ship, the East Indiamen were outclassed by the French frigates, which were faster, stronger, more powerful, better armed and better trained for military action. In convoy, however, the British were still a tough target which could damage the French ships, which were thousands of miles from any friendly port. Four years earlier, at the Battle of Pulo Aura, a convoy of 29 East Indiamen had driven off a powerful French squadron by pretending to be ships of the line. However that ruse had been widely reported on both sides, so was unlikely to work again.[9]
The French squadron became disorganised in its initial pursuit of the British, with Manche falling substantially to leeward of Vénus and Créole.[6] Seeing this, Stewart decided to concentrate the fire of his three vessels in an attack on Manche, hoping to cause enough damage to drive the frigate away. Vénus might then be reluctant to attack alone. Signalling his intentions to the captains of Charlton and United Kingdom, Stewart turned towards Vénus and bore down on her. Hamelin, realising the threat to his scattered squadron, signalled for his ships to join up. Given the wind direction, it was obvious that Windham would reach Manche before the French ships could unite.[6]
By 08:00, it was clear that Stewart's plan was going to fail: Charlton and United Kingdom had not joined his attack, falling far behind Windham as their captains deliberately checked the advance towards the French.[10] Although Stewart now faced a superior foe alone, he had no option but to continue the attack: his ship was now too close to attempt to flee from the French frigate.[6]Manche's commander, Captain Dornal de Guy, opened fire at 09:30, repeatedly hitting Windham as she approached. Stewart, aware of his gunners' poor accuracy, held fire until his ship was as close as he could get to the more nimble French ship. When Windham finally opened fire the results were disappointing: the entire broadside fell far short of the French ship.[10] The more manoeuvrable Manche now approached Windham at close range, with the two ships firing at one another for over an hour. The other two East Indiamen did not move to support Windham, instead firing occasional shots at extreme range, to no effect.[6]
Hamelin ordered Manche to leave the battered Windham and rejoin the rest of the French squadron. Dornal de Guy pulled his ship away at 12:00; Stewart used the break in the action to effect rudimentary repairs. Hamelin sent Manche and Créole after the slow Charlton and United Kingdom, while his own ship Vénus closed with Windham. Stewart now decided that the battle was hopeless; with the agreement of his officers, he determined to abandon the other ships and attempt to escape alone.[11]Manche and Créole rapidly overhauled and captured Charlton and United Kingdom, whose captains made no attempt to escape and surrendered after only a token resistance. However, Vénus struggled to catch Windham, as Stewart threw all non-essential stores overboard in an effort to make his ship lighter and faster. The two ships became separated from the other vessels and continued the chase for five days. At 10:30 on 22 November Hamelin finally caught the British ship, which surrendered.[12]
Return to Île de France
Bellone, under Captain Guy-Victor Duperré, had been sailing independently of Hamelin's squadron and had also had a successful cruise, capturing the small British warship HMS Victor on 2 November and the 48-gun Portuguese frigate Minerve on 22 November in the northern Bay of Bengal, before sailing back to Île de France.[2] To the south, Hamelin and Dornal de Guy reunited with their prizes on 6 December and also determined to return to Île de France as the cyclone season, in which any ship in the Indian Ocean would be at serious risk of destruction by a sudden tropical cyclone, was fast approaching. This was a dangerous time to be at sea: the year before seven large East Indiamen had sunk with a thousand lives in two major hurricanes and the year before that, the flagship of Sir Thomas Troubridge, HMS Blenheim, had disappeared without a trace in similar circumstances,[13]
On 19 December, the first winter storm struck the French squadron. In the heavy waves and high winds, first Windham and then Vénus were separated from the convoy, Manche marshalling the remaining ships and continuing the southwards journey. Windham's French prize crew were able to regain control of their ship and continued on to Île de France alone, but Vénus was struck by an even larger hurricane on 27 December and lost all three topmasts in the gale.[12] The French crew panicked as the storm began, and refused to attend to the sails or even close the hatches: as a result the vessel almost foundered as huge amounts of water poured into the ship. In desperation, Hamelin called Captain Stewart to his cabin and requested that his men save the ship but demanded that Stewart give his word that his men would not attempt to escape or seize the frigate.[14] Stewart refused to give any such guarantee but agreed to help repair the damage and bring the ship to safety. After securing the weapons lockers aboard, Hamelin agreed and Stewart and his men cut away the wrecked masts and pumped the water out of the hold, repairing the ship so that she was able to continue her journey without fear of foundering.[12]
On 31 December, the battered Vénus docked in Rivière Noire and Stewart and his men, who had never had an opportunity to seize their freedom, were marched to Port Louis, where they witnessed the arrival of Manche, accompanied by Créole, Charlton and United Kingdom on 1 January 1810.[15] For their services, Stewart and his fellow prisoners were later released and allowed to sail to the Cape of Good Hope. There they discovered Windham, which had failed to arrive at Île de France. Although her prize crew had retained control of the ship following the storm, they had been sighted, chased, and seized within sight of Île de France on 29 December by the newly arrived British frigate HMS Magicienne under Captain Lucius Curtis. Bellone and her prizes arrived at Port Louis on 2 January, having slipped past Rowley's blockade during a period of calm weather.[15]
Aftermath
Casualties in the battle were minimal, the British losing four killed and two wounded while the French recorded no casualties at all.[6] The significance of the action lies in the ease with which French frigates operating from Île de France were able to attack and capture vital trade convoys without facing serious opposition. The action of 18 November was the second occasion in 1809 in which a British East India convoy was destroyed and another would be lost in the action of 3 July 1810 the following year. These losses were exceptionally heavy, especially when combined with the 12 East Indiamen wrecked during 1809, and would eventually provoke a massive buildup of British forces in late 1810.[16] Despite the French success Vénus was never again able to operate independently in this manner. Hamelin was needed during 1810 to operate against the strong British frigate squadrons that returned in the spring to harass his cruisers and prepare for the planned invasions of Île Bonaparte and Île de France using the soldiers stationed on Rodrigues. The French commodore was ultimately unable to prevent these operations and was eventually captured in the action of 18 September 1810, a personal engagement with Rowley on HMS Boadicea.[17]
The action of 3 July 1810 was a minor naval engagement of the Napoleonic Wars, in which a French frigate squadron under Guy-Victor Duperré attacked and defeated a convoy of Honourable East India Company East Indiamen near the Comoros Islands. During the engagement the British convoy resisted strongly and suffered heavy casualties but two ships were eventually forced to surrender. These were the British flagship Windham, which held off the French squadron to allow the surviving ship Astell to escape, and Ceylon. The engagement was the third successful French attack on an Indian Ocean convoy in just over a year, the French frigates being part of a squadron operating from the Île de France under Commodore Jacques Hamelin.
Baron Jacques Félix Emmanuel Hamelin was a rear admiral of the French navy and later a Baron. He commanded numerous naval expeditions and battles with the Royal Navy as well as exploratory voyages in the Indian Ocean and the South Seas.
The Battle of Grand Port was a naval battle between squadrons of frigates from the French Navy and the British Royal Navy. The battle was fought during 20–27 August 1810 over possession of the harbour of Grand Port on Isle de France during the Napoleonic Wars. The British squadron of four frigates sought to blockade the port to prevent its use by the French through the capture of the fortified Île de la Passe at its entrance. This position was seized by a British landing party on 13 August and, when a French squadron under Captain Guy-Victor Duperré approached the bay nine days later, the British commander, Captain Samuel Pym, decided to lure them into coastal waters where his forces could ambush them.
The action of 31 May 1809 was a naval skirmish in the Bay of Bengal during the Napoleonic Wars. During the action, an Honourable East India Company convoy carrying goods worth over £500,000 was attacked and partially captured by the French frigate Caroline. The three East Indiamen that made up the convoy fought against their opponent with their own batteries of cannon but ultimately were less powerful, less manoeuvrable and less trained than their opponent and were defeated one by one; only the smallest of the three escaped. The action was the first in a string of attacks on important convoys in the Indian Ocean by French cruisers operating from Île de France and Île Bonaparte during a concerted campaign against British shipping in the region.
The Mauritius campaign of 1809–1811 was a series of amphibious operations and naval actions fought to determine possession of the French Indian Ocean territories of Isle de France and Île Bonaparte during the Napoleonic Wars. The campaign lasted from the spring of 1809 until the spring of 1811, and saw both the Royal Navy and the French Navy deploy substantial frigate squadrons with the intention of disrupting or protecting trade from British India. In a war in which the Royal Navy was almost universally dominant at sea, the campaign is especially notable for the local superiority enjoyed by the French Navy in the autumn of 1810 following the British disaster at the Battle of Grand Port, the most significant defeat for the Royal Navy in the entire conflict. After their victory, the British used the original Dutch name of Mauritius for Isle de France. In 1814, Île Bonaparte was returned to France, who eventually renamed it La Réunion.
Revenant was a 20-gun privateer corvette, launched in 1807, and designed by Robert Surcouf for commerce raiding. The French Navy later requisitioned her and renamed her Iéna, after Napoleon's then-recent victory at the Battle of Jena–Auerstedt. The British captured her in 1808 and she served in the Royal Navy as HMS Victor. The French Navy recaptured her in 1809, taking her back into service under the new name. The British again captured her when they took Isle de France in December 1810. They did not restore her to service and she was subsequently broken up.
The Raid on Saint-Paul was an amphibious operation conducted by a combined British Army, Royal Navy and Royal Marines force against the fortified French port of Saint Paul on Île Bonaparte during the Napoleonic Wars. The operation was launched on 20 September 1809 as both a precursor to a future full-scale invasion of Île Bonaparte and in order to capture the French frigate Caroline and the East Indiamen she had seized in the action of 31 May 1809 which were sheltering in the harbour. The operation was a complete success, with British storming parties capturing the batteries overlooking the port, which allowed a naval squadron under Commodore Josias Rowley to enter the bay and capture the shipping in the harbour.
The Vénus was a Junon-class frigate of the French Navy. She was captured in 1810 by the Royal Navy, and taken into British service as HMS Nereide. She was broken up in 1816.
Manche was a 40-gun Hortense-class frigate of the French Navy, originally named Département de la Manche, but the name was immediately shortened to Manche around the time of her launch in April 1806.
The Invasion of Île Bonaparte was an amphibious operation in 1810 that formed an important part of the British campaign to blockade and capture the French Indian Ocean territories of Île Bonaparte and Isle de France during the Napoleonic Wars. These islands formed a fortified base for a French frigate squadron under Commodore Jacques Hamelin to raid British convoys of East Indiamen travelling between Britain and British India. Hamelin's ships had destroyed two convoys the previous year despite the attention of a squadron of Royal Navy ships under Commodore Josias Rowley. Rowley had responded by raiding the fortified anchorage of Saint Paul on Île Bonaparte and capturing one of Hamelin's frigates and two captured East Indiamen.
The action of 13 September 1810 was an inconclusive frigate engagement during the Napoleonic Wars between British Royal Navy and French Navy frigates during which a British frigate was defeated by two French vessels near Isle de France, but British reinforcements were able to recapture the ship before the French could secure her. The British frigate was HMS Africaine, a new arrival to the Indian Ocean. She was under the command of Captain Robert Corbet, who had served there the previous year. Corbet was a notoriously unpopular officer and his death in the battle provoked a storm of controversy in Britain over claims that Corbet had either committed suicide at the shame of losing his ship, been murdered by his disaffected crew, or been abandoned by his men, who were said to have refused to load their guns while he remained in command. Whether any of these rumours were accurate has never been satisfactorily determined, but the issue has been discussed in several prominent naval histories and was the subject of at least one lawsuit.
The Invasion of Isle de France was a complicated but successful British amphibious operation in the Indian Ocean, launched in November 1810 during the Napoleonic Wars. During the operation, a substantial military force was landed by the Royal Navy at Grand Baie, on the French colony of Isle de France. Marching inland against weak French opposition, the British force was able to overwhelm the defenders in a series of minor engagements, culminating in the capture of the island's capital Port Napoleon and the surrender of Charles Decaen, the French governor. The surrender eliminated the last French territory in the Indian Ocean and among the military equipment captured were five French Navy frigates and 209 heavy cannon. Isle de France was retained by Britain at the end of the war under the name of Mauritius and remained part of the British Empire until 1968.
The action of 18 September 1810 was a naval battle fought between British Royal Navy and French Navy frigates in the Indian Ocean during the Napoleonic Wars. The engagement was one of several between rival frigate squadrons contesting control of the French island base of Île de France, from which French frigates had raided British trade routes during the war. The action came in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Grand Port, in which four British frigates had been lost, and just four days after a fifth British frigate had been captured and subsequently recaptured in the action of 13 September 1810. In consequence of the heavy losses the British force had suffered, reinforcements were hastily rushed to the area and became individual targets for the larger French squadron blockading the British base at Île Bourbon.
Lautaro was initially the British East Indiaman Windham, built by Perry, Wells & Green at the Blackwall Shipyard for the East India Company (EIC) and launched in 1800. She made seven voyages to India, Ceylon, and China for the EIC. In 1809–10, the French captured her twice, but the British also recaptured her twice. The Chilean Navy bought her in 1818 and she then served in the Chilean Navy, taking part in several actions during the liberation wars in Chile and Peru. From 1824 she was a training ship until she was sold in 1828.
Jean Dornal de Guy was a French naval officer.
The Bali Strait Incident was an encounter between a squadron of six French Navy frigates and six British East India Company (EIC) East Indiamen in the Bali Strait on 28 January 1797. The incident took place amidst the East Indies campaign of the French Revolutionary Wars — repeated French attempts to disrupt the highly valuable British trade routes with British India and Qing Dynasty China.
Ceylon was an East Indiaman launched in 1803. She performed four voyages for the British East India Company (EIC). On her fourth voyage the French captured her in the action of 3 July 1810; she then took part in the Battle of Grand Port. The British recaptured her at the invasion of Île de France. She completed her fourth voyage and her owners then sold her. She became a transport until her owners sold her in 1815 to new foreign owners.
The action of 10 September 1782 was a minor engagement between five merchant vessels — four East Indiamen of the British East India Company and a country-ship — on the one side, and a French frigate on the other. The action resulted in only a few casualties and was inconclusive. What was noteworthy was that the Indiamen sought out the French man-of-war and attacked it; it would have been more usual for the merchantmen to have avoided combat as they had little to gain from a battle.
Charlton was launched in 1798 in Liverpool as an East Indiaman for the British East India Company (EIC). She made five voyages to India for the EIC. A French naval squadron captured her in 1809 on her sixth voyage and she became a prison ship a Mauritius until the Royal Navy recaptured her at the end of 1810. She became a country ship, trading east of the Cape of Good Hope, and was lost in the Red Sea in 1812.
United Kingdom was an East Indiaman launched in 1801. She made three voyages to India for the British East India Company (EIC). The French Navy captured her in 1809 during her fourth voyage and the Royal Navy recaptured her in 1810. She became a country ship trading east of the Cape of Good Hope and was wrecked near the Cape in 1815.
References
Adkins, Roy & Lesley (2006). The War for All the Oceans. Abacus. ISBN0-349-11916-3.
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