Jean-Baptiste Philibert Willaumez was a French Navy officer and nobleman who served during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Willaumez joined the French navy at the age of 14, and proved to be a competent sailor. Having risen to the rank of pilot, he started studying navigation, attracting the attention of his superiors up to Louis XVI himself. Willaumez eventually became an officer and served under Antoine Bruni d'Entrecasteaux in his expedition to rescue Jean-François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse and explore the Indian Ocean and Oceania.
Charles René Magon de Médine was a French contre-amiral killed at the battle of Trafalgar whilst commanding the ship-of-the-line Algésiras - his conduct in the battle is seen by French historians as one of the few redeeming features of that disaster, and his name appears on the Arc de Triomphe. He is also notable as a Grand Officer of the Masonic Grand Orient de France.
Vice-Admiral Pierre César Charles Guillaume, marquis de Sercey, (26 April 1753 – 10 August 1836, was a French Navy officer, politician and nobleman. He is best known for his service in the American Revolutionary War and the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars and his role in Haitian Revolution.
The Atlantic campaign of 1806 was a complicated series of manoeuvres and counter-manoeuvres conducted by squadrons of the French Navy and the British Royal Navy across the Atlantic Ocean during the spring and summer of 1806, as part of the Napoleonic Wars. The campaign followed directly from the Trafalgar campaign of the year before, in which the French Mediterranean fleet had crossed the Atlantic, returned to Europe and joined with the Spanish fleet. On 21 October 1805, this combined force was destroyed by a British fleet under Lord Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar, although the campaign did not end until the Battle of Cape Ortegal on 4 November 1805. Believing that the French Navy would not be capable of organised resistance at sea during the winter, the First Lord of the Admiralty Lord Barham withdrew the British blockade squadrons to harbour. Barham had miscalculated – the French Atlantic fleet, based at Brest, had not been involved in the Trafalgar campaign and was therefore at full strength. Taking advantage of the reduction in the British forces off the port, Napoleon ordered two heavy squadrons to sea, under instructions to raid British trade routes while avoiding contact with equivalent Royal Navy forces.
HMS Carysfort was a 28-gun Coventry-class sixth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy. She served during the American War of Independence, the French Revolutionary and the Napoleonic Wars in a career that spanned over forty years.
The Battle of Les Sables-d'Olonne was a minor naval battle fought on 23 February 1809 off the town of Les Sables-d'Olonne on the Biscay Coast of France between a French Navy squadron of three frigates and a larger British squadron of ships of the line. The French squadron had sailed from the port of Lorient on 23 February in an effort to link up with a fleet from Brest under Jean-Baptiste Willaumez, but missed the rendezvous and was pursued by a British blockade squadron under Rear-Admiral Robert Stopford. The French commander, Commodore Pierre Roch Jurien, anchored his squadron under the batteries which protected the town of Les Sables-d'Olonne in the hope of dissuading an attack.
The Third Battle of Ushant or the action of 20–21 April 1782 was a naval battle fought during the American Revolutionary War, between a French naval fleet of three ships of the line protecting a convoy and two British Royal naval ships of the line off Ushant, a French island at the mouth of the English Channel off the northwesternmost point of France. This was the third battle that occurred in this region during the course of the war.
The Algeciras campaign was an attempt by a French naval squadron from Toulon under Contre-Admiral Charles Linois to join a French and Spanish fleet at Cadiz during June and July 1801 during the French Revolutionary Wars prior to a planned operation against either Egypt or Portugal. To reach Cadiz, the French squadron had to pass the British naval base at Gibraltar, which housed the squadron tasked with blockading Cadiz. The British squadron was commanded by Rear-Admiral Sir James Saumarez. After a successful voyage between Toulon and Gibraltar, in which a number of British vessels were captured, the squadron anchored at Algeciras, a fortified port city within sight of Gibraltar across Gibraltar Bay. On 6 July 1801, Saumarez attacked the anchored squadron, in the First Battle of Algeciras. Although severe damage was inflicted on all three French ships of the line, none could be successfully captured and the British were forced to withdraw without HMS Hannibal, which had grounded and was subsequently seized by the French.
Forte was a French 42-gun frigate, lead ship of her class.
The Battle of Île Ronde was a minor naval engagement between small French Navy and British Royal Navy squadrons off Île de France, now named Mauritius, in the early stages of the French Revolutionary Wars. The battle was fought over control of the waters around Île de France, which was under blockade from the British squadron as French warships and privateers operating from the island posed a significant threat to vital British trade routes connected to British India and China.
Vertu was a 40-gun French frigate designed by engineer Segondat. She served in Sercey's squadron in the Indian Ocean, and in Saint-Domingue. She was captured by the Royal Navy at the end of the Blockade of Saint-Domingue when the island surrendered to the British. After her capture the Navy sailed her to Britain but never commissioned her, and finally sold her in 1810.
The East Indies theatre of the French Revolutionary Wars was a series of campaigns related to the major European conflict known as the French Revolutionary Wars, fought between 1793 and 1801 between the new French Republic and its allies and a shifting alliance of rival powers. Although the Indian Ocean was separated by vast distance from the principal theatre of the conflict in Western Europe, it played a significant role due to the economic importance of the region to Great Britain, France's most constant opponent, of its colonies in India and the Far Eastern trade.
The action of 28 February 1799 was a minor naval engagement of the French Revolutionary Wars, fought off the mouth of the Hooghly River in the Bay of Bengal between the French frigate Forte and the Royal Navy frigate HMS Sybille. Forte was an exceptionally large and powerful ship engaged on a commerce raiding operation against British merchant shipping off the port of Calcutta in British India. To eliminate this threat, Sybille was sent from Madras in pursuit. Acting on information from released prisoners, Edward Cooke, captain of Sybille, was sailing off Balasore when distant gunfire alerted him to the presence of Forte on the evening of 28 February. The French frigate was discovered at anchor in the sandbanks at the mouth of the Hooghly with two recently captured British merchant ships.
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.
The action of 30 June 1798 was a minor naval engagement fought along the Biscay coast of France during the French Revolutionary Wars. The French Navy had been largely driven from the Atlantic Ocean early in the war following heavy losses in a series of failed operations. This had allowed the Royal Navy's Channel Fleet to institute a close blockade on the French naval ports of the Biscay coast, particularly Brest in Brittany. The blockade strategy included a constantly patrolling inshore squadron composed of frigates, tasked with preventing the passage of French ships into or out of the port. In the spring of 1798, several French frigates stationed in the Indian Ocean were sent back to France as the base at Île de France could no longer supply them effectively. One of these ships was the 40-gun frigate Seine, which departed Port Louis laden with 280 soldiers from the garrison.
The raid on Manila of January 1798 was a Royal Navy false flag military operation during the French Revolutionary Wars intended to scout the strength of the defences of Manila, capital of the Spanish Philippines, capture a Manila galleon and assess the condition of the Spanish Navy squadron maintained in the port. Spain had transformed from an ally of Great Britain in the War of the First Coalition into an enemy in 1796. Thus, the presence of a powerful Spanish squadron at Manila posed a threat to the China Fleet, an annual convoy of East Indiaman merchant ships from Macau in Qing Dynasty China to Britain, which was of vital economic importance to Britain. So severe was this threat that a major invasion of the Spanish Philippines had been planned from British India during 1797, but had been called off following the Treaty of Campo Formio in Europe and the possibility of a major war in India between the British East India Company and the Kingdom of Mysore.
The Macau Incident was an inconclusive encounter between a powerful squadron of French and Spanish warships and a British Royal Navy escort squadron in the Wanshan Archipelago off Macau on 27 January 1799. The incident took place in the context of the East Indies campaign of the French Revolutionary Wars, the allied squadron attempting to disrupt a valuable British merchant convoy due to sail from Qing Dynasty China. This was the second such attempt in three years; at the Bali Strait Incident of 1797 a French frigate squadron had declined to engage six East Indiamen on their way to China. By early 1799, the French squadron had dispersed, with two remaining ships deployed to the Spanish Philippines. There the frigates had united with the Spanish Manila squadron and sailed to attack the British China convoy gathering at Macau.
The action of 9 February 1799 was a minor naval engagement of the French Revolutionary Wars between a British Royal Navy frigate and a French privateer frigate fought 100 nautical miles (190 km) west of the southeastern coast of what is now Natal in South Africa. The 32-gun French frigate Prudente had since the start of the war been part of a squadron operating from Île de France. This squadron had dispersed during 1798, with the ships sent on independent commerce raiding operations across the British trade routes in the Indian Ocean. Prudente had subsequently been seized in the autumn of that year by Anne Joseph Hippolyte de Maurès, Comte de Malartic, the Governor of Île de France, and sold to a private raiding company.
The Battle of Port Louis was a minor naval engagement of the French Revolutionary Wars, fought on 11 December 1799 at the mouth of the Tombeau River near Port Louis on the French Indian Ocean island of Île de France, later known as Mauritius. Preneuse had originally been part of a powerful squadron of six frigates sent to the Indian Ocean in 1796 under the command of Contre-amiral Pierre César Charles de Sercey, but the squadron dispersed in 1798 and by the summer of 1799 Preneuse was the only significant French warship remaining in the region. The battle was the culmination of a three-month raiding cruise by the 40-gun French Navy frigate Preneuse, commanded by Captain Jean-Matthieu-Adrien Lhermitte. Ordered to raid British commerce in the Mozambique Channel, Lhermitte's cruise had been eventful, with an inconclusive encounter with a squadron of small British warships in Algoa Bay on 20 September and an engagement with the 50-gun HMS Jupiter during heavy weather on 9–11 October.
The Capitulation of Saldanha Bay was the surrender in 1796 to the British Royal Navy of a Dutch expeditionary force sent to recapture the Dutch Cape Colony. In 1794, early in the French Revolutionary Wars, the army of the French Republic overran the Dutch Republic which then became a French client state, the Batavian Republic. Great Britain was concerned by the threat the Dutch Cape Colony in Southern Africa posed to its trade routes to British India. It therefore sent an expeditionary force that landed at Simon's Town in June 1795 and forced the surrender of the colony in a short campaign. The British commander, Vice-Admiral Sir George Elphinstone, then reinforced the garrison and stationed a naval squadron at the Cape to protect the captured colony.
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