Robert Surcouf was a French privateer, businessman and slave trader who operated in the Indian Ocean from 1789 to 1808 during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Capturing over 40 prizes, he later amassed a large fortune from a variety of commercial activities, such as ship-owning, privateering, slave trading and owning land.
Jean-Baptiste Philibert Willaumez was a French naval officer and nobleman who served during the French Revolutionary Wars 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.
Révolutionnaire, was a 40-gun Seine-class frigate of the French Navy, launched in May 1794. The British captured her in October 1794 and she went on to serve with the Royal Navy until she was broken up in 1822. During this service Revolutionnaire took part in numerous actions, including three for which the Admiralty would in 1847 award clasps to the Naval General Service Medal, and captured several privateers and merchant vessels.
Sibylle was a 38-gun Hébé-class frigate of the French Navy. She was launched in 1791 at the dockyards in Toulon and placed in service in 1792. After the 50-gun fourth rate HMS Romney captured her in 1794, the British took her into service as HMS Sybille. She served in the Royal Navy until disposed of in 1833. While in British service Sybille participated in three notable single ship actions, in each case capturing a French vessel. On anti-slavery duties off West Africa from July 1827 to June 1830, Sybille captured many slavers and freed some 3,500 slaves. She was finally sold in 1833 in Portsmouth.
Seine was a 38-gun French Seine-class frigate that the Royal Navy captured in 1798 and commissioned as the fifth-rate HMS Seine. On 20 August 1800, Seine captured the French ship Vengeance in a single ship action that would win for her crew the Naval General Service Medal. Seine's career ended in 1803 when she hit a sandbank near the Texel.
Égyptienne was a French frigate launched at Toulon in 1799. Her first service was in Napoleon's Egyptian campaign of 1801, in which the British captured her at Alexandria. She famously carried the Rosetta Stone to Woolwich, and then the Admiralty commissioned her into the Royal Navy as the 40-gun fifth-rate frigate HMS Egyptienne. She served in a number of single-ship actions before being reduced to harbour service in 1807, and was sold for breaking in 1817.
Vice Admiral Pierre César Charles Guillaume, Marquis de Sercey, born at the Château du Jeu, La Comelle on 26 April 1753 and died in Paris, 1st arrondissement on 10 August 1836, was a French naval officer and politician. He is best known for his service in the American Revolutionary War, his role in Saint-Domingue and the Mascarene Islands, and for commanding the French naval forces in the Indian Ocean from 1796 to 1800.
Régénérée was a 40-gun Cocarde-class frigate of the French Navy. The British captured her in 1801 at the fall of Alexandria, named her HMS Alexandria, sailed her back to Britain, but never commissioned her. She was broken up in 1804.
Hubert Le Loup de Beaulieu, often written Beaulieu-Leloup, was a French East India Company and later Navy officer. He was a cousin to Louis Garneray.
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.
Salamine was originally the Spanish Navy's Infante 18-gun brig, built in 1787 at Cadiz. The French Navy captured her at Toulon in December 1793 and recommissioned her; they renamed her on 10 May 1798 as Salamine, for the battle of Salamis. On 18 June 1799, HMS Emerald captured her and she was brought into Royal Navy service as HMS Salamine. She served briefly in the Mediterranean, where she captured two French privateers and several merchant vessels before the Royal Navy sold her at Malta in 1802, after the Treaty of Amiens ended the war with France.
Captain Edward Cooke, was a Royal Navy officer of the late eighteenth century who was best known for his service during the French Revolutionary Wars. Cooke gained notoriety in the first year of the war as a junior officer when he was entrusted with the surrender negotiations of the French port city of Toulon. Cooke's success under threat of execution led to the British occupation of the city and the ensuing Siege of Toulon. Cooke was promoted for the successful negotiations and given command of the large captured French frigate HMS Sybille in the Indian Ocean. In 1798 he led a successful bloodless raid on the port of Manila in the Spanish Philippines. In the following year Cooke tracked down and engaged the powerful French raiding frigate Forte off the mouth of the Hooghly River at the action of 28 February 1799. In the ensuing battle, Forte was captured but Cooke was struck by grape shot. He would die in Calcutta on 25 May and was interred with full military honours.
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 action of 9 September 1796 was an inconclusive minor naval engagement between small French Navy and British Royal Navy squadrons off northwestern Sumatra, near Banda Aceh, during the French Revolutionary Wars. The French squadron comprised six frigates engaged in commerce raiding against British trade routes passing through captured parts of the Dutch East Indies, and posed a considerable threat to the weakened British naval forces in the region. The British force consisted of two 74-gun ships of the line hastily paired to oppose the eastward advance of the French squadron.
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 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.
Osterley was a three-decker East Indiaman, launched in 1780, that made seven trips for the British East India Company between 1781 and 1800. She was present at two battles, and an engagement in which four Indiamen and a country ship engaged a French frigate. On her last trip a French frigate captured her in a single-ship action, but sent her on her way. Osterley eventually returned to Britain in 1800. Her subsequent fate is unknown.
Lord Hawkesbury was launched in the United States in 1781, probably under another name. She entered Lloyd's Register in 1787. She made six voyages as a whaler. On her second whaling voyage she "the first parcel of ambergris 'by any English whaler'". She was lost on the seventh after a squadron of French naval vessels had captured her. One of her original, British crew succeeded in regaining sufficient control from her prize crew to enable him to run her aground, wrecking her.
The action of 12 August 1782 was a minor single-ship action that opposed the French 32-gun frigate Bellone to the British 28-gun HMS Coventry in the run-up to the Battle of Trincomalee. Although both ships were frigates, Bellone belonged to the Iphigénie class and was a comparatively large frigate for her time, carrying a battery of 18-pounder long guns, while Coventry was a sixth-rate armed only with 9-pounder long guns. Furthermore, Bellone had the advantage of the wind. The nominal crew of Coventry was about tho thirds of that of Bellone, but in the occasion it was reinforced by the troops she was carrying. In spite of these overwhelming odds, Coventry managed to inflict heavy casualties on Bellone, and most decisively to shoot most of the senior staff. The resulting confusion on Bellone allowed Coventry to escape to Madras.
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