On 27 November 1793, the ships of a squadron under the command of Captain Thomas Pasley of HMSBellerophon captured Blonde. At the time of her capture Blonde was armed with 28 guns and had a crew of 210 men under the command of Citizen Gueria.[2] A subsequent prize money notice listed the vessels that shared in the proceeds as Bellerophon, Vanguard, Phoenix, Latona, and Phaeton.[3]
In 1798 Nelson was detached into the Mediterranean by Earl St. Vincent with HMSOrion, Alexander, Emerald, Terpsichore, and Bonne Citoyenne. They sailed from Gibraltar on 9 May and on 12 May were struck by a violent gale in the Gulf of Lion that carried away Vanguard's topmasts and foremast. The squadron bore up for Sardinia, Alexander taking Vanguard in tow.
A storm on 12 May 1798 off Toulon depicting left: Vanguard, with blown off topmasts and foremast; right: AlexanderAlexander towing Vanguard
On 19 May, while Nelson was off station repairing his storm damage, Napoleon Bonaparte sailed from Toulon with a force of 72 warships and 400 transports to strike at Egypt with the intention of eventually invading India. On 13 June he occupied Malta and, on 19 June, continued the passage to Egypt arriving off Alexandria on 1 July. On 31 May, Nelson returned to Toulon to find that the French had left 13 days earlier. Searching for the enemy he reached Naples on 17 June and Messina on 20 June. Here he learnt of the fall of Malta and the probable destination of the French. He sailed for Alexandria but overtook the French and arrived on 29 June, two days before them. Finding no enemy he returned to Sicily via Asia Minor. Convinced that the French were going to Egypt he set sail once more for Alexandria.
On the evening of 1 August 1798, half an hour before sunset, the Battle of the Nile began when Nelson attacked the French fleet which was moored in a strong line of battle in Aboukir Bay with gunboats, four frigates, and batteries on Aboukir Island to protect their flanks. Goliath(1781) was the leading ship and, followed by four others, she broke through the French line to anchor and fight from the shoreward side. Vanguard remained on the seaward side and soon the French van and centre were being overwhelmed by six ships on either side of their line. The French lost 11 ships of the line and two frigates. Their dead numbered 1700 and the wounded 1500. The British lost 218 killed and 678 wounded.
Caricature of Nelson and his men aboard Vanguard after the Battle of the Nile. This caricature reflects the national sentiment toward Nelson and his admirable behaviour and treatment of his men. Courtesy of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London.
Vanguard lost three officers killed, Thomas Seymour and John Taylor, midshipmen, and Captain Faddy of the marines. Lieutenants N. Vassal and J. Ayde, J. Campbell, the Admiral's secretary, M. Austin, the boatswain, and J. Weatherspoon and George Antrim, midshipmen, were wounded. Twenty seamen and seven marines were killed and sixty seamen and eight marines were wounded. Nelson was also wounded. On 3 August the captains of the squadron met on board Orion and agreed to present Nelson with a sword.
Vanguard sailed for Naples on 19 August and arrived on 22 September. She was in need of new masts and a bowsprit but Nelson deferred getting them until he knew the situation of Culloden(1783) which was to be careened at Naples after grounding during the battle. The King of Naples came out to meet her.
In September, Captain Thomas Hardy took command, still under Nelson's flag. Two months later a formidable French army had invaded Naples and on 16 December Vanguard was shifted out of gunshot of the ports. On 20 December Nelson, in order to evacuate the royal family and other important people, ordered the small barge of Vanguard, covered by three barges and the frigate HMSAlcmene, armed with cutlasses only, to be at the Victoria wharf. All the other boats of Vanguard and Alcmene, and the launches and carronades, were ordered to assemble on board Vanguard under the direction of Captain Hardy and row halfway to the Mola Figlio.
An etching of the Vanguard published in 1799
By 21 December the Neapolitan Royal Family, the British Ambassador and his family, several Neapolitan nobles and most of the English gentlemen and merchants had been embarked, numbering in all about 600 persons in the ships of the squadron. Vanguard sailed on 23 December and arrived, after a stormy passage, in Palermo on 26 December.
Nelson shifted his flag from Vanguard to Foudroyant on 6 June 1799, taking with him Captain Hardy and a number of other officers, leaving Captain W. Brown in command. In 1800, Vanguard was taken out of commission at Portsmouth.
In 1801, under the command of Captain Sir Thomas Williams. Vanguard sailed from Portsmouth on 20 April to join the Baltic fleet. The fleet, under Vice Admiral Pole, returned on 10 August. Vanguard, St George, Spencer, Powerful, Dreadnought, Ramillies, and Zealous sailed again on 19 August to cruise off Cádiz. The first four were victualled and provisioned for five months at Gibraltar and sailed for Jamaica in December. Warrior followed them as soon as she had watered at Tetuan.
Napoleonic Wars
In 1803, under the command of Captain James Walker, Vanguard was operating out of Jamaica on the Blockade of Saint-Domingue. On 30 June, Cumberland and her squadron under Captain Henry William Bayntun were between Jean-Rabel and St. Nichola Mole in the West Indies, having just parted with a convoy when they spotted a sail of what appeared to be a large French warship. Cumberland and Vanguard approached her and after a few shots from Vanguard the French vessel surrendered, having suffered two men badly wounded, and being greatly outgunned. She proved to be the frigate Créole, of 44 guns, primarily 18-pounders, under the command of Citizen Le Ballard. She had been sailing from Cape François to Port au Prince with General Morgan (the second in command in San Domingo), his staff, and 530 soldiers, in addition to her crew of 150 men. The Royal Navy took her into service as HMS Creole.
While the British were taking possession of Créole, a small French navy schooner, under the command of a lieutenant and sailing the same course as Créole, sailed into the squadron; she too was seized. She had on board 100 bloodhounds from Cuba, which were "intended to accompany the Army serving against the Blacks."[4]
On 2 July 1803, Bayntun's squadron captured the French privateer Superieure.[4]Vanguard was the actual captor.[5] The British took her into the Royal Navy as Superieure. The squadron also captured the privateer Poisson Vollant,[4] which the Royal Navy also took into service.
About three weeks later, on 24 July, two French 74s, Duquesne and Duguay Trouin, and the frigate Guerrière put to sea from Cap-Français during a squall in an effort to evade Bellerophon, Elephant, Theseus, Tartar under Captain Perkins, and Vanguard, which were blockading the port. The French ships separated during the night but the British overtook Duquesne the following day and captured her after a short exchange of fire with Vanguard, which lost one man killed and one wounded. The prize was broken up on arrival in England after being damaged running on to the Morant Cays.
The crew at prayer after the Battle of the Nile
In September the French troops in northwest Saint Domingue were being closely pressed by the rebel slaves under General Jean-Jacques Dessalines. Captain Walker, off the Mole St. Nicholas, persuaded the General not to put the garrison of Saint-Marc to death but to march them to the Mole in safety where Vanguard would take possession of the shipping in the bay. The 850 men of the garrison, all very emaciated, were successfully evacuated, and the brigPapillon, pierced for 12 guns but only mounting 6, the brigTrois Amis, transport, and the schoonerMary Sally with 40 or 50 barrels of powder were brought out.[6] The British took Papillon into service under her existing name.[7] Then on 5 September Vanguard captured the French navy's schooner Courier de Nantes, of two guns and four swivel guns. She had a crew of 15 men under the command of an enseigne de vaisseau, and was carrying 30 barrels of flour to Saint-Marc.[6][Note 1]
Vanguard captured the American schooner Independence on 16 November. Six days later Vanguard took the two French schooners Rosalle, laden with saltpeter and lignum vitae, and St Rosario.
Fate
Vanguard was paid off by the end of 1805. In 1807 she was repaired at Plymouth.
On 16 November 1807 Leeds, of London, was returning to London from Petersburg when she was on shore on the Middle Ground. HMSQuail and boats from Vanguard were able to get Leeds off after she had been stuck for 36 hours.[9]
Under the command of Captain Thomas Baker, Vanguard became the flagship of Rear Admiral Thomas Bertie in 1808. In 1812 she was made a prison ship at Plymouth and in 1814 she became a powder hulk. Vanguard was broken up in 1821.[1]
Legacy
The American investment firm Vanguard takes its name from HMS Vanguard after founder John Bogle chose the name from an antique book chronicling historical British naval achievements.[10] A likeness of the ship served as the company's logo from 1981 to 2020.
Sails of Glory: Napoleonic Wars miniatures by Ares Games includes HMS Vanguard as one of the ships in its starter set. It is the British counterpart to the French ship-of-the-line Genereux.[citation needed]
Notes
↑ Vanguard had a ship's tender named Growler, perhaps a renamed prize, that shared in the prize money for Trois Amis and Courier de Nantes.[8]
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.
HMS Polyphemus, a 64-gun third-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, launched on 27 April 1782 at Sheerness. She participated in the 1801 Battle of Copenhagen, the Battle of Trafalgar, and the Siege of Santo Domingo. In 1813 she became a powder hulk and was broken up in 1827.
HMS Elephant was a 74-gun third-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy. She was built by George Parsons in Bursledon, Hampshire, and launched on 24 August 1786.
HMS Implacable was a 74-gun third-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy. She was originally the French Navy's Téméraire-class ship of the line Duguay-Trouin, launched in 1800.
HMS Hannibal was a 74-gun third-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, launched on 15 April 1786, named after the Carthaginian general Hannibal. She is best known for having taken part in the Algeciras Campaign, and for having run aground during the First Battle of Algeciras on 5 July 1801, which resulted in her capture. She then served in the French Navy until she was broken up in 1824.
HMS Swiftsure was a 74-gun third rate ship of the line of the British Royal Navy. She spent most of her career serving with the British, except for a brief period when she was captured by the French during the Napoleonic Wars in the action of 24 June 1801. She fought in several of the most famous engagements of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, fighting for the British at the Battle of the Nile, and the French at the Battle of Trafalgar.
HMS Foudroyant was an 80-gun third rate of the Royal Navy, one of only two British-built 80-gun ships of the period. Foudroyant was built in the dockyard at Plymouth Dock and launched on 31 March 1798. Foudroyant served Nelson as his flagship from 6 June 1799 until the end of June 1800.
HMS Latona was a 36-gun, fifth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy that served during the American Revolutionary War, the French Revolutionary Wars, and the Napoleonic Wars. Shortly after her launch in 1781, she participated in the Battle of Dogger Bank against a Dutch squadron in the North Sea. In September 1782, Latona took part in the relief of Gibraltar and was the first ship in the convoy to pass through the Straits, when Richard Howe sent her ahead, to spy on the condition of the Franco-Spanish fleet in Algeciras Bay.
HMS Northumberland was a 74-gun third-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, built at the yards of Barnard, Deptford and launched on 2 February 1798. She carried Napoleon to his final exile on St Helena.
HMS Cumberland was a 74-gun third rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, launched on 29 March 1774 at Deptford Dockyard.
HMS Bedford was a Royal Navy 74-gun third rate. This ship of the line was launched on 27 October 1775 at Woolwich.
HMS Centaur was a 74-gun third rate of the Royal Navy, launched on 14 March 1797 at Woolwich. She served as Sir Samuel Hood's flagship in the Leeward Islands and the Channel. During her 22-year career Centaur saw action in the Mediterranean, the Channel, the West Indies, and the Baltic, fighting the French, the Dutch, the Danes, and the Russians. She was broken up in 1819.
HMS Brunswick was a 74-gun third rate ship-of-the-line of the Royal Navy, launched on 30 April 1790 at Deptford. She was first commissioned in the following month under Sir Hyde Parker for the Spanish Armament but was not called into action. When the Russian Armament was resolved without conflict in August 1791, Brunswick took up service as a guardship in Portsmouth Harbour. She joined Richard Howe's Channel Fleet at the outbreak of the French Revolutionary War and was present at the battle on Glorious First of June where she fought a hard action against the French 74-gun Vengeur du Peuple. Brunswick was in a small squadron under William Cornwallis that encountered a large French fleet in June 1795. The British ships successfully retreated into the Atlantic through a combination of good seamanship, good fortune and deceiving the enemy.
HMS Phoenix was a 36-gun Perseverance-class fifth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy. The shipbuilder George Parsons built her at Bursledon and launched her on 15 July 1783. She served in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars and was instrumental in the events leading up to the battle of Trafalgar. Phoenix was involved in several single-ship actions, the most notable occurring on 10 August 1805 when she captured the French frigate Didon, which was more heavily armed than her. She was wrecked, without loss of life, off Smyrna in 1816.
HMS Doris was a 36-gun fifth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy, launched on 31 August 1795. which saw service in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Doris was built by Cleveley, of Gravesend.
HMS Sans Pareil("Without Equal") was an 80-gun third rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy. She was formerly the French ship Sans Pareil, but was captured in 1794 and spent the rest of her career in service with the British.
HMS Astraea was a Royal Navy 36-gun fifth rate Apollo-class frigate, launched- in 1810 at Northam. She participated in the Battle of Tamatave and in an inconclusive single-ship action with the French frigate Etoile. Astrea was broken up in 1851.
HMS Aeolus was a 32-gun Amphion-class fifth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy. She was launched in 1801 and served in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, and the War of 1812.
The blockade of Saint-Domingue was a naval campaign fought during the first months of the Napoleonic Wars in which a series of British Royal Navy squadrons blockaded the French-held ports of Cap-Français and Môle-Saint-Nicolas on the northern coast of the French colony of Saint-Domingue, soon to become Haiti, after the conclusion of the Haitian Revolution on 1 January 1804. In the summer of 1803, when war broke out between the United Kingdom and the French Consulate, Saint-Domingue had been almost completely overrun by Haitian Armée Indigène troops led by Jean-Jacques Dessalines. In the north of the country, the French forces were isolated in the two large ports of Cap-Français and Môle-Saint-Nicolas and a few smaller settlements, all supplied by a French naval force based primarily at Cap-Français.
John Loring was an officer in the Royal Navy who served during the American War of Independence and the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.
Lavery, Brian (2003) The Ship of the Line - Volume 1: The development of the battlefleet 1650–1850. Conway Maritime Press. ISBN0-85177-252-8.
Winfield, Rif & Stephen S Roberts (2015) French Warships in the Age of Sail 1786 - 1861: Design Construction, Careers and Fates. (Seaforth Publishing). ISBN9781848322042
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