The Flottille de Boulogne was a large French fleet of small gunboats, brigs, and barges built in Boulogne on the orders of First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte from 1801. It was a key component of Napoleon's planned invasion of the United Kingdom.
The Flottille de Boulogne was a large French fleet of small gunboats, brigs, and barges built in Boulogne on the orders of First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte from 1801. It was a key component of Napoleon's planned invasion of the United Kingdom.
At the Battle of Svensksund, the Swedes broke the naval stalemate with their Russian opponents and won a spectacular victory by engaging the Archipelago fleet, a flotilla of galleys, prams, and gunboats. [1] With the French Navy weakened by the Glorious First of June, a strategic victory with a crushing tactical cost, and incapable of challenging the Royal Navy head-on since the Croisière du Grand Hiver, the concept of a rush across the English Channel to invade Britain, gained traction.
The plans of the ships designed by Fredrik Henrik Chapman were transmitted to Pierre-Alexandre-Laurent Forfait by JJ. Muskeyn in 1796. [2]
On 10 October 1794, the Committee of Public Safety created a first draft of the flotilla. [1] On 25 December 1797, the French Directory appointed General Napoleon Bonaparte to the head of the Armée d'Angleterre. [1]
In a decree of 12 July 1801, the flotilla was organised into nine divisions. [3] It comprised several types of ships:
In the summer, the British under Lord Nelson launched a series of raids on Boulogne, with a first attempt on 4 August, and another on 15–16. French admiral Louis-René Levassor de Latouche Tréville organised a successful defence that derailed the attacks.
The Treaty of Amiens of 25 March 1802 suspended the activity of the flotilla, but it was reactivated at the outbreak of the War of the Third Coalition in May 1803. Napoleon reorganised the flotilla, which was regularly attacked by British forces with little effect; against a background of constant harassing actions between small French and British ships, the flotilla achieved some limited victories against larger British units, such as the capture of HMS Minerve on 2 July 1803 off Cherbourg, or the action of 15 July 1805.
On 3 October 1804, a British force under Lord Keith attempted to destroy the flotilla using 25 fire ships, which were repelled. [5] The attempt was renewed on 9 October 1806 using Congreve rockets, and the next days by gunfire, with no effect. [6]
HMS Bellerophon, known to sailors as the "Billy Ruffian", was a ship of the line of the Royal Navy. A third-rate of 74 guns, she was launched in 1786. Bellerophon served during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, mostly on blockades or convoy escort duties. She fought in three fleet actions: the Glorious First of June (1794), the Battle of the Nile (1798) and the Battle of Trafalgar (1805). While the ship was on blockade duty in 1815, Napoleon boarded Bellerophon so he could surrender to the ship's captain, ending 22 years of almost continuous war between Britain and France.
The Gunboat War was a naval conflict between Denmark–Norway and Great Britain supported by Sweden during the Napoleonic Wars. The war's name is derived from the Danish tactic of employing small gunboats against the materially superior Royal Navy. In Scandinavia it is seen as the later stage of the English Wars, whose commencement is accounted as the First Battle of Copenhagen in 1801.
In the Battle of Cape Finisterre off Galicia, Spain, the British fleet under Admiral Robert Calder fought an indecisive naval battle against the combined Franco-Spanish fleet which was returning from the West Indies. In the ensuing battle the British captured two Spanish ships of the line, but failed to prevent the joining of French Admiral Pierre de Villeneuve's fleet to the squadron of Ferrol and to strike the shattering blow that would have freed Great Britain from the danger of an invasion. Calder was later court-martialled and severely reprimanded for his failure and for avoiding the renewal of the engagement on 23 and 24 July. At the same time, in the aftermath Villeneuve elected not to continue on to Brest, where his fleet could have joined with other French ships to clear the English Channel for an invasion of Great Britain.
Louis-René Madelaine Le Vassor, comte de La Touche-Tréville was a French admiral. He fought in the American War of Independence and became a prominent figure of the French Revolutionary Wars and of the Napoleonic wars.
Formidable was an 80-gun Tonnant-class ship of the line of the French Navy, laid down in August 1794 and given the name Formidable, on 5 October, but renamed Figuieres on 4 December 1794, although the name was restored to Formidable on 31 May 1795 after she was launched at Toulon on 17 March 1795. She participated in the Battle of Algeciras, the Battle of Cape Finisterre and several other actions before the British captured her at the Battle of Cape Ortegal on 4 November 1805. The British took her into service as HMS Brave. She was sold to be broken up in April 1816.
Vice-Admiral Count Pierre Étienne René Marie Dumanoir Le Pelley was a French Navy officer, best known for commanding the vanguard of the French fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar. His conduct during this battle was the subject of controversy.
Count Honoré Joseph Antoine Ganteaume was a French Navy officer and Vice-admiral.
Napoleon's planned invasion of the United Kingdom at the start of the War of the Third Coalition, although never carried out, was a major influence on British naval strategy and the fortification of the coast of southeast England. In 1796 the French had already tried to invade Ireland in order to destabilise the UK or as a stepping-stone to Great Britain. The first French Army of England had gathered on the Channel coast in 1798, but an invasion of England was sidelined by Napoleon's concentration on the campaigns in Egypt and against Austria, and shelved in 1802 by the Peace of Amiens. Building on planning for mooted invasions under France's ancien régime in 1744, 1759, and 1779, preparations began again in earnest soon after the outbreak of war in 1803, and were finally called off in 1805, before the Battle of Trafalgar.
The Saint-Domingue expedition was a large French military invasion sent by Napoleon Bonaparte, then First Consul, under his brother-in-law Charles Victor Emmanuel Leclerc in an attempt to regain French control of the Caribbean colony of Saint-Domingue on the island of Hispaniola, and curtail the measures of independence and abolition of slaves taken by the former slave Toussaint Louverture. It departed in December 1801 and, after initial success, ended in a French defeat at the Battle of Vertières and the departure of French troops in December 1803. The defeat forever ended Napoleon's dreams of a French empire in the West.
The Raid on Boulogne in 1804 was a naval assault by elements of the Royal Navy on the fortified French port of Boulogne-sur-Mer, during the Napoleonic Wars. It differed from the conventional tactics of naval assaults of the period by utilizing a wide range of new equipment produced by the American inventor Robert Fulton, with the backing of the Admiralty. Despite its ambitious aims the assault produced little material damage to the French fleet anchored in the harbour, but did perhaps contribute to a growing sense of defeatism amongst the French as to their chances of crossing the English Channel in the face of the Royal Navy and launching a successful invasion of the United Kingdom.
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 Battle of the Îles Saint-Marcouf was an engagement fought off the Îles Saint-Marcouf near the Cotentin peninsula on the Normandy coast of France in May 1798 during the French Revolutionary Wars. Dislodging a British garrison on the islands was the main objective for French forces. The garrison allowed the islands to serve as a resupply base for Royal Navy ships patrolling northern French waters. Apart from expelling the British, the French sought to test new equipment and tactics, which had allegedly been developed with an intention of invading Britain.
The raid on Boulogne in 1801 was a failed attempt by elements of the Royal Navy led by Vice Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson to destroy a flotilla of French vessels anchored in the port of Boulogne, a fleet which was thought to be used for the invasion of England, during the French Revolutionary Wars. At dawn on 4 August, Nelson ordered five bomb vessels to move forward and open fire against the French line. Despite the inferior gunpowder of French artillery and the high number of shots fired by the bomb vessels, the British sustained more casualties and withdrew. The night of 16 August Nelson returned and tried to bring off the flotilla, attacking with seventy boats and nearly two thousand men organized into four divisions, but the attack was successfully repelled by the defenders, led by Admiral Latouche Tréville.
Ganteaume's expeditions of 1801 were three connected major French Navy operations of the spring of 1801 during the French Revolutionary Wars. A French naval squadron from Brest under Contre-amiral Honoré Ganteaume, seeking to reinforce the besieged French garrison in Ottoman Egypt, made three separate but futile efforts to reach the Eastern Mediterranean. The French army in Egypt had been trapped there shortly after the start of the Napoleonic campaign in Egypt in 1798, when the French Mediterranean Fleet was destroyed at the Battle of the Nile. Since that defeat, the French Navy had maintained only a minimal presence in the Mediterranean Sea, while the more numerous British and their allies had succeeded in blockading and defeating several French bases almost unopposed.
Pierre Maurice Julien de Quérangal sometimes written Kerangal, was a French Navy officer and admiral.
Atlas was built in Souths Shields by Temple and launched in 1801 for Temple. She made two voyages transporting convicts from Ireland or England to Port Jackson. On the first voyage she carried cargo for the British East India Company (EIC). On the second she sailed to Bengal after delivering her convicts to New South Wales and was wrecked off India in 1820 while on her way back to Britain.
HMS Vincejo, was the Spanish naval brig Vencejo, which was built c.1797, probably at Port Mahon, and that the British captured in 1799. The Royal Navy took her into service and she served in the Mediterranean where she captured a privateer and a French naval brig during the French Revolutionary Wars. After the start of the Napoleonic Wars, the French captured Vencejo in Quiberon Bay in 1804. The French Navy took her into service as Victorine, but then sold her in January 1805. She then served as the French privateer Comte de Regnaud until the British recaptured her in 1810. The Royal Navy did not take her back into service.
The FrenchImperial Naval Corps was the branch of the French Imperial Navy responsible for administering the infantry and artillery which was tasked with manning and utilising the weapons on the Navy's ships. The corps comprised two 'official' branches and Naval Artillery and one 'unofficial branch'. The Naval Infantry and Naval Artillery formed the 'official' branches as they were under the direct control of the navy and Naval corps. However, the Coastal Artillery was de facto an 'unofficial' branch, as it remained under control of the army for operational duties, while administration and supply was given to the Navy.
The French Imperial Navy was the name given to the French Navy during the period of the Napoleonic Wars, and subsequently during the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte. The first use of the title 'Imperial Navy' was in 1804, following the Coronation of Napoleon, a name derived from the old French Navy under The Republic. It notably saw action at the Battle of Trafalgar, and its defeat prevented Napoleon's planned invasion of the United Kingdom. After the First Bourbon Restoration in 1814, the navy was renamed to its old title of French Royal Navy, but after Napoleon's return in March 1815, briefly became the Imperial Navy once more. Following the Second Bourbon Restoration, the navy once again became royal, and the title wasn't used again.
The Battle of Gris-Nez and Blanc-Nez was a naval engagement between a combined Batavian-French flotilla under Carel Hendrik Ver Huell and a larger British squadron under Lord Keith during the War of the Third Coalition of the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815). The Batavian-French flotilla was able to repulse the British fleet and successfully reached Boulogne-sur-Mer.