Allemand's expedition of 1805, often referred to as the Escadre invisible (invisible squadron) in French sources, was an important French naval expedition during the Napoleonic Wars, which formed a major diversion to the ongoing Trafalgar Campaign in the Atlantic Ocean. With the French Mediterranean Fleet at sea, Emperor Napoleon I hoped to unite it with the French Atlantic Fleet and together form a force powerful enough to temporarily displace the British Royal NavyChannel Fleet for long enough to allow an invasion force to cross the English Channel and land in Britain. In support of this plan, the French squadron based at Rochefort put to sea in July 1805, initially with the intention that they would join the Atlantic Fleet from Brest. When this fleet failed to put to sea, the Rochefort squadron, under Contre-Admiral Zacharie Allemand, went on an extended raiding cruise across the Atlantic, both to intercept British trade left lightly defended by the concentration of British forces in European waters and with the intention of eventually combining with the French Mediterranean Fleet then blockaded in Spanish harbours.
On 25 September, Allemand achieved a major success when his squadron, while waiting for a convoy from the Leeward Islands, encountered a seven-ship convoy from the island of Saint Helena. The convoy's commander, Captain Daniel Woodriff in the fourth rateHMSCalcutta, sought to interpose his ship between the French squadron and his convoy and was captured after a fierce battle. All except one of convoy escaped, and by deliberately drawing the French away from his own convoy's direction, he had saved the Leewards Islands convoy from attack as well. After the battle, Allemand was forced to conduct repairs at Tenerife, sailing again on 17 October, four days before the French Mediterranean Fleet was destroyed at the Battle of Trafalgar. With the planned invasion impossible, Allemand began commerce raiding in the Eastern Atlantic, capturing 43 merchant ships during his cruise and successfully disrupting the British blockade of Cadiz. This had an unintended but significant effect on the Atlantic campaign of 1806, resulting eventually in the Battle of San Domingo in February 1806. Allemand returned to Rochefort on 23 December, having not lost a single ship during the expedition.
Trafalgar campaign
In March 1805, the French Mediterranean Fleet sailed from Toulon under Vice-Admiral Pierre-Charles Villeneuve for an extended cruise to the West Indies, ultimately under orders to link with the French Atlantic Fleet based at Brest. Together these fleets would stage a major operation in the English Channel, driving off the Royal NavyChannel Fleet and allowing a fleet of landing barges to land on the southern coast of England as the first move in an invasion of Britain.[1] Arriving at Martinique on 14 May, Villeneuve waited for reinforcements from the Atlantic fleet, only to be informed on 2 June that they had failed to leave port. Despite repeated orders issued to the Atlantic fleet instructing them to sail to Martinique, Vice-Admiral Honoré Ganteaume had failed in his one effort to break out of Brest during March and then given up. His entire fleet ultimately remained in port throughout the campaign.[2] On 7 June Villeneuve learned of the arrival in the Caribbean of the British Mediterranean Fleet under Vice-Admiral Lord Nelson and hastily sailed back to Europe, eventually sheltering in the Spanish harbour of Vigo after an encounter on 22 July with a British fleet under Sir Robert Calder at the Battle of Cape Finisterre, in which two of his ships were captured. In the aftermath of the spring campaign, both Nelson and Calder returned to Britain, leaving only relatively small squadrons off the French and Spanish coasts.[3]
Despite delays to his plan, Napoleon had pressed ahead with preparations for the Channel campaign: an army of 200,000 men was assembling at Boulogne for the invasion, and orders continued to insist that the fleets under Villeneuve and Ganteaume put to sea.[4] Also ordered to sail was the squadron based at the Atlantic port of Rochefort, led by Contre-Admiral Zacharie Allemand. Allemand's squadron consisted of the powerful 120-gun ship Majestueux, three other ships of the line and several frigates and brigs, forming a significant force in its own right and a valuable addition to any battle fleet. Allemand was ordered to cruise off the southern coast of Cornwall, awaiting the combined fleets of Villeneuve and Ganteaume and their descent into the Channel. If this force did not materialise, Allemand was subsequently ordered to the Bay of Biscay to join up with Villeneuve on his route northwards and should this too fail then he was to conduct an extended commerce raiding operation in the Atlantic to take advantage of the concentration of British forces off Europe and the consequent exposure of British trade.[5]
Bay of Biscay
Allemand sailed from Rochefort on 16 July while the blockade squadron under Rear-Admiral Charles Stirling was out of position, rapidly escaping the coast into the Atlantic. On 17 July, the squadron outran and captured the British corvette or sloop-of-warHMSRanger, rated as 16 guns but actually carrying 24. Ranger's crew had observed the approaching French squadron from some distance, and Commander Charles Coote had ordered that once their capture was inevitable, the crew were to cause as much damage as possible to their vessel to deny its use to the French. So successful were these efforts that Allemand was forced to burn Ranger once her crew had been removed as prisoners of war.[5] Allemand subsequently reached his first station, off The Lizard, the day after capturing Ranger. There he waited in vain for the fleet under Ganteaume, which had never departed Brest. Following his instructions, Allemand then sailed for the Bay of Biscay, where he was to meet the fleet under Villeneuve that had been ordered north to join with Ganteaume. He passed southwards during July and was in the region of Cape Finisterre on 22 July: later records show that he was close enough to the site of the Battle of Cape Finisterre to have participated in the engagement if he had been aware that it was under way.[6] News of Allemand's presence reached Villeneuve early in August and on 5 August he despatched the frigate HMSDidon in search of the Rochefort squadron. Didon was followed on 9 August by the main fleet, including 29 ships of the line and associated frigates and corvettes. Villeneuve passed up the Spanish coast, anchoring off the village of Zerez, near Ferrol, on 10 August and departing the following day in a west by northwest direction.[7] On 13 August the fleet was spotted by the frigates HMSIris under Captain Edward Brace and HMSNaiad under Captain Thomas Dundas, who were forced to flee a French detachment sent in pursuit, losing sight of the enemy on 14 August as Villeneuve's main force continued to the northwest.[7]
While Villeneuve was searching for Allemand, the Rochefort squadron was passing south along the Spanish coast in search of Villeneuve, anchoring at Vigo on 16 August without having seen any sign of the combined fleet. Villeneuve had not left instructions at Vigo for the Rochefort squadron and Allemand was uncertain where his superior was intending to sail to.[8] One of Villeneuve's scouting frigates meanwhile had spoken with a Danish ship that reported a fleet of 25 British ships of the line actively searching the region for the combined fleet. When on the evening of 14 August Villeneuve's scouts sighted the ship of the line HMSDragon under Captain Edward Griffiths, the frigate HMSPhoenix and the captured Didon to the west, the French admiral assumed they were an advance guard of this British fleet and turned away to the south, the impression encouraged by frantic signals raised by Dragon.[9] In fact, these ships were the only British forces in the region. The Danish ship had been boarded by Dragon earlier in the day and her crew deliberately fed misinformation about British strength. When the French scouts sighted Dragon, the presence of the captured Didon and Captain Griffiths' signals, that were made to an expanse of empty sea beyond the visible horizon on the French ship, successfully misled the French admiral into fleeing a non-existent fleet.[10]
Bypassing Vigo on his flight southwards, Villeneuve put into the Southern Spanish fleet base of Cadiz on 20 August. By abandoning his efforts to reach the English Channel, Villeneuve was in effect abandoning the entire invasion strategy and, when news of Villeneuve's retreat reached him, Napoleon decided to formally abandon the campaign, marching the army at Boulogne south to the Austrian border.[11] Without instructions from his superior, and with no idea where the main French fleet was, Allemand spent much of August off the Spanish coast before deciding to turn to the third aspect of his orders, the disruption of British trade.[12]
6 killed, 6 wounded, Calcutta and merchant ship Brothers captured
The threat posed by the fleets in Brest and Cadiz was stretching the Royal Navy, and convoy escorts were weaker than usual as so many vessels had been diverted to the blockade fleets needed to watch French and Spanish movements. As a result, there were a number of independently sailing merchant ships in the Bay of Biscay and Allemand encountered and captured three on his journey north into the area later known as the Western Approaches. From the prisoners taken out of these ships, the French admiral learned that a large convoy was due from the West Indies, protected only by a single ship of the line, HMSIllustrious. This rich prize would be a major success for Allemand and his squadron cruised the Western Approaches in anticipation of its arrival during September 1805.[5]
At 12:00 on 25 September at 49°30′N09°00′W / 49.500°N 9.000°W / 49.500; -9.000 ("Action of 26 September 1805), Armide, an outlying frigate from Allemand's squadron, spotted sails to the southeast. Closing to investigate, these sails were identified as a small British convoy, not the expected force under Illustrious but another convoy from Saint Helena, consisting of the East IndiamanIndus, two whalers, three small merchant ships, the slow merchant vessel Brothers and the 50-gun fourth rate ship HMSCalcutta.[13] The convoy had departed Saint Helena with seven ships on 3 August, and made fast time northwards until 14 September when it was joined by Brothers, which had been blown out of the Illustrious convoy by Atlantic gales several days earlier. Brothers was a heavily laden ship that sailed poorly, and as a result the entire Saint Helens convoy was severely delayed. When lookouts on Calcutta sighted the sails to the northwest, Captain Daniel Woodriff was not immediately alarmed. He was expecting the Illustrious convoy from that direction, and knew that a number of British squadrons were at sea. Throughout the afternoon and the following night the sails closed with his squadron until at 11:00 on 26 September they were close enough for Woodriff to make the Royal Navy secret recognition signals.[13]
By 12:00, Woodriff had realised that the approaching ships did not know the recognition signals and therefore must be enemies. With his first priority to protect his convoy, Woodriff sent an urgent message to Indus, the largest and strongest of the merchant ships, to lead the main body of the convoy ahead eastwards at all speed.[14] With his most valuable charges now making distance away from the French, Woodriff persuaded the captain of Brothers to sail northwards while he intended to engage the French directly and draw them southwards, away from the Saint Helena convoy and also away from the projected track of the Illustrious convoy. Once the merchant ships were gone beyond the horizon, Woodriff turned Calcutta about and sailed directly for the nearest French ship, the frigate Armide, which was gaining on his vessel.[15]Armide was far more nimble than the lumbering Calcutta, and rapidly passed her out of range of her broadside, the frigate turning about and opening fire with her stern chasers, cannon mounted in the rear of the ship, at 15:00. Calcutta replied ineffectually with her bow chasers, until Armide allowed the British ship to draw alongside. The two ships then opened a heavy fire on one another which continued for an hour until Armide, with her rigging badly damaged, drew back towards the rapidly approaching French squadron.[14]
At 17:00, the leading French ship of the line, Magnanime, came within range with her bow chasers. Calcutta continued sailing southwards, remaining ahead of the squadron but not at a sufficient distance to avoid Magnanime's fire. Realising that unless he took drastic measures his ship would be caught, Woodriff turned Calcutta back towards Magnanime, hoping to disable her before the next ship in line, the frigate Thétis, could join the battle.[15] Captain Pierre-François Violette on Magnanime prepared to meet Calcutta and the engagement rapidly became furious, Calcutta and Magnanime exchanging full broadsides at close range. Within 45 minutes, it was clear that Woodriff's gamble had failed. The larger and more powerful Magnanime inflicted severe damage to the British ship's rigging, rendering her unable to manoeuvre or escape, with the remainder of the French squadron bearing down. With defeat inevitable, Woodriff spared the lives of his men by striking his colours and surrendering to Violette.[14] Although Calcutta was badly damaged among her rigging and sails, her hull had suffered little from the engagement and she had only lost six killed and six wounded. French casualties were negligible, although Armide was forced to undergo extensive temporary repairs on her own sails and rigging before she was able to operate as a scout once more. Brothers had also been captured: the corvette Sylphe had separated during the chase and rapidly overhauled the lumbering merchant ship, which had surrendered without a fight.[14]
Raiding operations
Woodriff's resistance had an important indirect effect on Allemand's cruise. In drawing the squadron southwards, Woodriff had pulled them out of the line travelled by the Illustrious convoy. In the aftermath of the engagement, it took two days to repair the battered Calcutta and in that time the convoy had safely passed Allemand's former position without sighting the French force.[14] With his object frustrated, Allemand completed the repairs to Calcutta and crewed her with men drawn from the rest of the squadron, adding the ship to his force. Aware that news of his presence would rapidly spread, Allemand subsequently turned southwards, sailing from the North Atlantic to the coast of North Africa to avoid pursuing British forces. There Allemand anchored for a time at the Spanish island of Tenerife, where he was able to repair and resupply his squadron before embarking on a lengthy cruise against the British convoys that regularly crossed the region.[16]
Elsewhere, the Trafalgar campaign reached its climax on 21 October 1805, when Villeneuve's fleet was intercepted at sea off Cadiz by Nelson's fleet and destroyed at the Battle of Trafalgar, the French and Spanish losing 17 out of 30 ships of the line.[17] The British fleet did not lose a single ship, but the cost of the victory was severe: Lord Nelson, victor of four major battles in the previous eight years, had been killed at the height of the combat by a musket ball. The survivors of the combined fleet scattered, most making their way back to Cadiz. However, the four ships of the French vanguard, which had rapidly outdistanced the battle and not returned, escaped towards the Bay of Biscay under Contre-Admiral Pierre Dumanoir le Pelley.[17] Allemand's cruise was to have unforeseen consequences for Dumanoir's squadron: among the British forces mustered to hunt for the ships from Rochefort was a squadron under Rear-Admiral Sir Richard Strachan in HMSCaesar, consisting of five ships of the line and two frigates. On 2 November, the frigate HMS Phoenix, which had also been ordered to search for signs of Allemand, discovered four French ships near Cape Finisterre. Unaware of the events of Trafalgar and assuming these ships to be a part of Allemand's force, Captain Dundas sought to lure them towards Strachan's squadron, which he knew to be in the area.[18] Dundas was successful in provoking Dumanoir to chase his frigate, and two days later, on 4 February, Strachan was able to bring the French squadron to battle, capturing all four ships at the Battle of Cape Ortegal.[19]
As these events unfolded Allemand was many hundreds of miles to the south, preying successfully on the trade that passed along the African coast without any serious opposition from major British forces, which were still largely confined to European waters. There was particular fear in Britain that Allemand might intercept two convoys of vital strategic importance: one extremely valuable convoy from India to Britain that also carried Major-General Sir Arthur Wellesley as a passenger, and an expeditionary force under Admiral Sir Home Riggs Popham for a planned invasion of South Africa. In the event however, both these convoys managed to successfully avoid Allemand's force.[20] On 20 November, with his supplies running low, Allemand attacked a convoy of seven ships sailing from Britain to Gorée, passing close to the Savage Islands.[21] Although his attack was successful, Allemand was unable to prevent the escape of the convoy's escort, the 18 gun brig HMSLark under Commander Frederick Langford. Making all sail northwards in search of reinforcements, Langford encountered his target on 26 November, meeting HMSAgamemnon, one of the ships that made up the squadron under Vice-Admiral Sir John Thomas Duckworth. Duckworth had, with his subordinate Rear-Admiral Thomas Louis, been ordered to keep a close blockade on Cadiz in case the remainder of the combined fleet that still sat at anchor there should try to escape. The work was tedious, and Duckworth immediately abandoned his post when news of attack by Allemand's squadron reached him. He cast southwards in search of the French, leaving Cadiz guarded by just two frigates.[22]
Allemand was aware of the risk involved in allowing Lark to escape, and was already many miles to the north when Duckworth headed southwards. There was no benefit to be had in a battle with Duckworth or any other British squadron and he did not delay on his journey home, reaching Rochefort without further incident on 23 December.[16] His actions off the Savage Islands were to have far reaching consequences however. Duckworth continued southwards for much of December 1805, only turning back north once he had reached the Cape Verde Islands, a point far too far south for Allemand to have been operating in. Accepting that his enemy had escaped him, Duckworth turned back north but soon afterwards ran into the frigate HMSArethusa under Captain Charles Brisbane, whose large convoy had been broken up by an unidentified French battle squadron in the Bay of Biscay.[23] Assuming this force to be Allemand, Duckworth set a course to intercept them based on their last known heading. Duckworth's reckoning was good, and on 26 December he encountered a large squadron and immediately gave chase. It was not until sometime later that he realised the force he was chasing was too large to be Allemand's: in fact Duckworth had stumbled into a squadron under Contre-Admiral Jean-Baptiste Willaumez, sent from Brest with another force under Contre-Admiral Corentin Urbain Leissègues on 15 December at the start of the Atlantic campaign of 1806, an operation largely inspired by the success of Allemand's expedition.[24] Although Willaumez was eventually able to outrun Duckworth, the chase continued for so long that Duckworth's squadron was forced to take on fresh supplies at St Kitts in the West Indies. There news reached him that Leissègues had been sighted off Santo Domingo and he sailed to investigate, annihilating the French squadron at the Battle of San Domingo in February 1806.[25]
Aftermath
The French naval authorities considered Allemand's cruise a major success in a year that had cost them huge numbers of ships and men. In addition to Ranger and Calcutta, Allemand had captured the hired naval cutterDove and 43 merchant ships, including the lumbering Brothers. With the exception of Calcutta, all of these prizes had been burnt and their prisoners had been transferred to the French squadron, 1,200 in total. For minimal casualties, Allemand had inflicted a blow against British Atlantic trade and tied up substantial Royal Navy resources during a complicated and strategically vital campaign.[26]Calcutta was bought into the French Navy and became an armed storeship, still carrying the designated 50 guns. She served for three years before her destruction at the Battle of the Basque Roads in April 1809. Her British officers were later exchanged and honourably acquitted at the court-martial that investigated her loss.[16]
In France, Allemand was highly commended for the success of his operation, especially as both Leissègues and Willaumez met with disaster during the 1806 campaign. He remained with the Atlantic fleet for the next two years and in 1808 commanded a second successful operation in the Atlantic, carrying reinforcements to the Mediterranean Fleet at Toulon. In 1809 he returned to the Brest fleet as its commander, his ships trapped near the Île-d'Aix. He subsequently commanded the fleet at the defeat of the Battle of Basque Roads.[27] His captains on the expedition were also praised and two later led their own campaigns, although both ended in defeat: Captain Éléonore-Jean-Nicolas Soleil was in command of the frigate squadron destined for the West Indies that was destroyed in the Bay of Biscay at the action of 25 September 1806,[28] while Captain Amable-Gilles Troudeled a larger squadron to the West Indies in early 1809, suffering defeat in a battle off the Îles des Saintes.[29]
Pierre-Charles-Jean-Baptiste-Silvestre de Villeneuve was a French naval officer during the Napoleonic Wars. He was in command of the French and the Spanish fleets that were defeated by Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar.
The Battle of San Domingo was a naval battle of the Napoleonic Wars fought on 6 February 1806 between squadrons of French and British ships of the line off the southern coast of the French-occupied Spanish colonial Captaincy General of Santo Domingo in the Caribbean.
The action of 25 September 1806 was a naval battle fought during the Napoleonic Wars off the French Biscay port of Rochefort. A French squadron comprising five frigates and two corvettes, sailing to the French West Indies with supplies and reinforcements, was intercepted by a British squadron of six ships of the line that was keeping a close blockade of the port as part of the Atlantic campaign of 1806. The British ships, under the command of Commodore Sir Samuel Hood, spotted the French convoy early in the morning of 25 September, just a few hours after the French had left port, and immediately gave chase. Although the French ships tried to escape, they were heavily laden with troops and stores, and the strong winds favoured the larger ships of the line, which caught the French convoy after a five-hour pursuit, although they had become separated from one another during the chase.
The Battle of Groix was a large naval engagement which took place near the island of Groix off the Biscay coast of Brittany on 23 June 1795 during the French Revolutionary Wars. The battle was fought between elements of the British Channel Fleet and the French Atlantic Fleet, which were cruising in the region on separate missions. The British fleet, commanded by Admiral Lord Bridport, was covering an invasion convoy carrying a French Royalist army to invade Quiberon, while the French under Vice-admiral Villaret de Joyeuse had sailed a week earlier to rescue a French convoy from attack by a British squadron. The French fleet had driven off the British squadron in a battle on 17 June known as Cornwallis's Retreat, and were attempting to return to their base at Brest when Bridport's force of 14 ships of the line appeared on 22 June.
The Battle of the Basque Roads, also known as the Battle of Aix Roads, was a major naval battle of the Napoleonic Wars, fought in the narrow Basque Roads at the mouth of the Charente River on the Biscay coast of France. The battle, which lasted from 11–24 April 1809, was unusual in that it pitted a hastily-assembled squadron of small and unorthodox British Royal Navy warships against the main strength of the French Atlantic Fleet, the circumstances dictated by the cramped, shallow coastal waters in which the battle was fought. The battle is also notorious for its controversial political aftermath in both Britain and France.
The Battle of Cape Ortegal was the final action of the Trafalgar campaign, and was fought between a squadron of the Royal Navy and a remnant of the fleet that had been defeated earlier at the Battle of Trafalgar. It took place on 4 November 1805 off Cape Ortegal, in north-west Spain and saw Captain Sir Richard Strachan defeat and capture a French squadron under Rear-Admiral Pierre Dumanoir le Pelley. It is sometimes referred to as Strachan's Action.
The Atlantic campaign of 1806 was one of the most important and complex naval campaigns of the post-Trafalgar Napoleonic Wars. Seeking to take advantage of the withdrawal of British forces from the Atlantic in the aftermath of the Battle of Trafalgar, Emperor Napoleon ordered two battle squadrons to sea from the fleet stationed at Brest, during December 1805. Escaping deep into the Atlantic, these squadrons succeeded in disrupting British convoys, evading pursuit by British battle squadrons and reinforcing the French garrison at Santo Domingo. The period of French success was brief: on 6 February 1806 one of the squadrons, under Vice-Admiral Corentin Urbain Leissègues, was intercepted by a British squadron at the Battle of San Domingo and destroyed, losing all five of its ships of the line.
The Trafalgar campaign was a long and complicated series of fleet manoeuvres carried out by the combined French and Spanish fleets; and the opposing moves of the Royal Navy during much of 1805. These were the culmination of French plans to force a passage through the English Channel, and so achieve a successful invasion of the United Kingdom. The plans were extremely complicated and proved to be impractical. Much of the detail was due to the personal intervention of Napoleon, who as a soldier rather than a sailor failed to consider the effects of weather, difficulties in communication, and the Royal Navy. Despite limited successes in achieving some elements of the plan the French commanders were unable to follow the main objective through to execution. The campaign, which took place over thousands of miles of ocean, was marked by several naval engagements, most significantly at the Battle of Trafalgar on 21 October, where the combined fleet was decisively defeated, and from which the campaign takes its name. A final mopping up action at the Battle of Cape Ortegal on 4 November completed the destruction of the combined fleet, and secured the supremacy of the Royal Navy at sea.
The action of 13 March 1806 was a naval engagement of the Napoleonic Wars, fought when a British and a French squadron met unexpectedly in the mid-Atlantic. Neither force was aware of the presence of the other prior to the encounter and were participating in separate campaigns. The British squadron consisted of seven ships of the line accompanied by associated frigates, led by Rear-Admiral Sir John Borlase Warren, were tasked with hunting down and destroying the French squadron of Contre-Admiral Jean-Baptiste Willaumez, which had departed Brest for raiding operations in the South Atlantic in December 1805, at the start of the Atlantic campaign of 1806. The French force consisted of one ship of the line and one frigate, all that remained of Contre-Admiral Charles-Alexandre Durand Linois' squadron that had sailed for the Indian Ocean in March 1803 during the Peace of Amiens. Linois raided British shipping lanes and harbours across the region, achieving limited success against undefended merchant ships but repeatedly withdrawing in the face of determined opposition, most notably at the Battle of Pulo Aura in February 1804. With his stores almost exhausted and the French ports east of the Cape of Good Hope that could have offered him replenishment eliminated, Linois decided to return to France in January 1806, and by March was inadvertently sailing across the cruising ground of Warren's squadron.
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.
Lamellerie's expedition was a French naval operation launched in February 1806. Four French Navy frigates and a brig, all survivors of the Battle of Trafalgar in October 1805, attempted to break past the British blockade of Cadiz on 23 February 1806, taking advantage of the withdrawal of the principal blockade squadron several months earlier at the start of the Atlantic campaign of 1806. Although the squadron was intercepted by elements of the British blockade force, Captain Louis-Charles-Auguste Delamarre de Lamellerie escaped with the four frigates by abandoning the slower brig, which was captured. During the next six months, Lamellerie's squadron cruised the Atlantic, visiting Senegal, Cayenne and the West Indies but failing to cause any significant disruption to British trade.
L'Hermite's expedition was a French naval operation launched in 1805 during the Napoleonic Wars. The operation was intended as both a commerce raiding operation against the British trading posts of West Africa and as a diversion to the Trafalgar campaign. Sailing from Lorient in October 1805 with one ship of the line, two frigates and a corvette, Commodore Jean-Marthe-Adrien L'Hermite was under orders to intercept and destroy British traders and slave ships off the West African coast and await reinforcements under Jérôme Bonaparte which were to be used in the invasion and capture of one of the British trading forts for use as a permanent French naval base from which further raiding operations could be conducted. It was also hoped by the French naval command that L'Hermite might draw some of the large British fleet maintained off Cadiz away from the blockade to allow the French and Spanish allied fleet trapped in the harbour to escape.
Zacharie Jacques Théodore Allemand was a French admiral.
HMS Calcutta was the East Indiaman Warley, converted to a Royal Navy 56-gun fourth rate. This ship of the line served for a time as an armed transport. She also transported convicts to Australia in a voyage that became a circumnavigation of the world. The French 74-gun Magnanime captured Calcutta in 1805. In 1809, after she ran aground during the Battle of the Basque Roads and her crew had abandoned her, a British boarding party burned her.
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 frigate action of 29 May 1794—not to be confused with the much larger fleet action of 29 May 1794 that took place in the same waters at the same time—was a minor naval engagement of the French Revolutionary Wars between a Royal Navy frigate and a French Navy frigate. The action formed a minor part of the Atlantic campaign of May 1794, a campaign which culminated in the battle of the Glorious First of June, and was unusual in that the French ship Castor had only been in French hands for a few days at the time of the engagement. Castor had previously been a British ship, seized on 19 May by a French battle squadron in the Bay of Biscay and converted to French service while still at sea. While the main fleets manoeuvered around one another, Castor was detached in pursuit of a Dutch merchant ship and on 29 May encountered the smaller independently cruising British frigate HMS Carysfort.
Neptuno was an 80-gun Montañes-class ship of the line of the Spanish Navy. She was built in 1795 and took part in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. She fought with the Franco-Spanish fleet in the battle of Trafalgar, and was wrecked in its aftermath.
The Croisière de Bruix was the principal naval campaign of the year 1799 during the French Revolutionary Wars. The expedition began in April 1799 when the bulk of the French Atlantic Fleet under Vice-Admiral Étienne Eustache Bruix departed the base at Brest, evading the British Channel Fleet which was blockading the port and tricking the commander Admiral Lord Bridport into believing their true destination was Ireland. Passing southwards, the French fleet narrowly missed joining with an allied Spanish Navy squadron at Ferrol and was prevented by an easterly gale from uniting with the main Spanish fleet at Cádiz before entering the Mediterranean Sea. The Mediterranean was under British control following the destruction of the French Mediterranean Fleet at the Battle of the Nile in August 1798, and a British fleet nominally under Admiral Earl St Vincent was stationed there. Due however to St. Vincent's ill-health, operational control rested with Vice-Admiral Lord Keith. As Keith sought to chase down the French, the Spanish fleet followed Bruix into the Mediterranean before being badly damaged in a gale and sheltering in Cartagena.
Richery's expedition was a French naval operation during 1795 and 1796 as part of the French Revolutionary Wars. The operation was led by Commodore Joseph de Richery and comprised two separate cruises; the first was an operation off Cádiz in Southern Spain in which Richery attacked and defeated a large British merchant convoy with a weak escort, taking many prizes. Forced to anchor at Cádiz, the French squadron was subsequently blockaded in the port for almost a year. Richery was enabled to escape in August 1796 by a Spanish fleet, and went on to attack British fisheries off Newfoundland and Labrador before returning to France having inflicted severe damage to British Atlantic trade.
Pierre-Francois Violette was a French naval captain who served during the French Revolutionary Wars and Napoleonic Wars. He was born in the city of Béthune, France sometime in November of 1759.
References
Adkins, Roy & Lesley (2006). The War for All the Oceans. Abacus. ISBN0-349-11916-3.
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