Isle de France was the name of the Indian Ocean island which is known as Mauritius and its dependent territories between 1715 and 1810, when the area was under the French East India Company and a part of the French Empire. Under the French, the island witnessed major changes. The increasing importance of agriculture led to the importation of slaves and the undertaking of vast infrastructural works that transformed Port Louis into a major capital, port, warehousing, and commercial centre.
The action of 18 November 1809 was the major engagement of a six-month cruise by a French frigate squadron in the Indian Ocean, during the Napoleonic Wars. The French commander, Commodore Jacques Hamelin, was engaged in commerce raiding across the Bay of Bengal. His squadron achieved local superiority, capturing numerous merchant ships and minor warships. On 18 November 1809, off the Nicobar Islands, three warships under Hamelin's command encountered a convoy of three East Indiamen merchant vessels bound for British India, mainly carrying recruits for the army of the East India Company (EIC).
The Mauritius campaign of 1809–1811 was a series of amphibious operations and naval actions fought to determine possession of the French Indian Ocean territories of Isle de France and Île Bonaparte during the Napoleonic Wars. The campaign lasted from the spring of 1809 until the spring of 1811, and saw both the Royal Navy and the French Navy deploy substantial frigate squadrons with the intention of disrupting or protecting trade from British India. In a war in which the Royal Navy was almost universally dominant at sea, the campaign is especially notable for the local superiority enjoyed by the French Navy in the autumn of 1810 following the British disaster at the Battle of Grand Port, the most significant defeat for the Royal Navy in the entire conflict. After their victory, the British used the original Dutch name of Mauritius for Isle de France. In 1814, Île Bonaparte was returned to France, who eventually renamed it La Réunion.
Lieutenant General Sir Henry Sheehy Keating KCB was born at Bansha, County Tipperary in Ireland and was an officer of the British Army during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars who served in two important operations against French colonies. The most important of his services came during the Mauritius campaign, when he commanded the troops stationed on Rodrigues, a small island used as a base by British forces during the campaign. Keating was instrumental in planning and executing a series of amphibious operations against the French held islands, culminating in the capture of both Île Bonaparte and Île de France in 1810, as part of the Mauritius campaign of 1809–11.
The Raid on Saint-Paul was an amphibious operation conducted by a combined British Army, Royal Navy and Royal Marines force against the fortified French port of Saint Paul on Île Bonaparte during the Napoleonic Wars. The operation was launched on 20 September 1809 as both a precursor to a future full-scale invasion of Île Bonaparte and in order to capture the French frigate Caroline and the East Indiamen she had seized in the action of 31 May 1809 which were sheltering in the harbour. The operation was a complete success, with British storming parties capturing the batteries overlooking the port, which allowed a naval squadron under Commodore Josias Rowley to enter the bay and capture the shipping in the harbour.
The Battle of Tamatave was fought off Tamatave in Madagascar between British and French frigate squadrons during the Napoleonic Wars. The action was the final engagement of the Mauritius campaign of 1809–1811, and it saw the destruction of the last French attempt to reinforce their garrison on Mauritius. Although the news had not reached Europe by February 1811 when the reinforcement squadron left Brest, Mauritius had been captured in December 1810 by a British invasion fleet, the French defences hampered by the lack of the supplies and troops carried aboard the frigate squadron under the command of Commodore François Roquebert in Renommée. Roquebert's heavily laden ships reached Mauritius on 6 May and discovered that the island was in British hands the following day, narrowly escaping a trap laid by a squadron of British frigates ordered to hunt and destroy them.
The Invasion of Île Bonaparte was an amphibious operation in 1810 that formed an important part of the British campaign to blockade and capture the French Indian Ocean territories of Île Bonaparte and Isle de France during the Napoleonic Wars. These islands formed a fortified base for a French frigate squadron under Commodore Jacques Hamelin to raid British convoys of East Indiamen travelling between Britain and British India. Hamelin's ships had destroyed two convoys the previous year despite the attention of a squadron of Royal Navy ships under Commodore Josias Rowley. Rowley had responded by raiding the fortified anchorage of Saint Paul on Île Bonaparte and capturing one of Hamelin's frigates and two captured East Indiamen.
The action of 13 September 1810 was an inconclusive frigate engagement during the Napoleonic Wars between British Royal Navy and French Navy frigates during which a British frigate was defeated by two French vessels near Isle de France, but British reinforcements were able to recapture the ship before the French could secure her. The British frigate was HMS Africaine, a new arrival to the Indian Ocean. She was under the command of Captain Robert Corbet, who had served there the previous year. Corbet was a notoriously unpopular officer and his death in the battle provoked a storm of controversy in Britain over claims that Corbet had either committed suicide at the shame of losing his ship, been murdered by his disaffected crew, or been abandoned by his men, who were said to have refused to load their guns while he remained in command. Whether any of these rumours were accurate has never been satisfactorily determined, but the issue has been discussed in several prominent naval histories and was the subject of at least one lawsuit.
The Invasion of Isle de France was a complicated but successful amphibious operation in the Indian Ocean, launched in November 1810 during the Napoleonic Wars. During the operation, a substantial British military force was landed by the Royal Navy at Grand Baie on Isle de France. Marching inland against weak French opposition, the British force was able to overwhelm the defenders in a series of minor engagements, culminating in the capture of the island's capital Port Napoleon and the surrender of Charles Decaen, the French governor. The surrender eliminated the last French territory in the Indian Ocean and among the military equipment captured were five French Navy frigates and 209 heavy cannon. Isle de France was retained by Britain at the end of the war under the name of Mauritius and remained part of the British Empire until 1968.
The action of 18 September 1810 was a naval battle fought between British Royal Navy and French Navy frigates in the Indian Ocean during the Napoleonic Wars. The engagement was one of several between rival frigate squadrons contesting control of the French island base of Île de France, from which French frigates had raided British trade routes during the war. The action came in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Grand Port, in which four British frigates had been lost, and just four days after a fifth British frigate had been captured and subsequently recaptured in the action of 13 September 1810. In consequence of the heavy losses the British force had suffered, reinforcements were hastily rushed to the area and became individual targets for the larger French squadron blockading the British base at Île Bourbon.
Grappler was a 14-gun brig, that belonged to the East India Company's navy - the Bombay Marine. Grappler was launched in 1804. The French captured her in 1806, but the British recaptured her in 1809. She then disappears from readily available records.
Coromandel was the French prize Modeste, captured in 1793 and refitted at Chittagong, British India. She made two voyages transporting convicts to Port Jackson, the first for the British East India Company (EIC). A French privateer captured her in 1805 but she had returned to British hands before 1809. An American privateer captured her in 1814 but this time the British Royal Navy recaptured her within days. She foundered in Indian waters on 6 February 1821.
HCS Aurora, the Honourable East India Company's Ship Aurora, was a sloop-of-war launched at Bombay for the Bombay Marine, the naval arm of the British East India Company (EIC), to protect the trade in the Indian Ocean from pirates. The French captured her in late September 1810, only to have the British recapture her in early December. She returned to the service of the Bombay Marine, assisting the British Government and the Royal Navy in various campaigns in the East Indies and the Persian Gulf. She was still listed on the rolls of the Bombay Marine on 1 January 1828.
Ceylon was an East Indiaman launched in 1803. She performed four voyages for the British East India Company (EIC). On her fourth voyage the French captured her in the action of 3 July 1810; she then took part in the Battle of Grand Port. The British recaptured her at the invasion of Île de France. She completed her fourth voyage and her owners then sold her. She became a transport until her owners sold her in 1815 to new foreign owners.
Suffolk was launched in 1803 at Calcutta and at some point prior to 1810 was renamed General Wellesley. She made one voyage for the British East India Company (EIC) but an American privateer captured her in December 1814 on the outbound leg of her second EIC voyage. In January 1815 she stranded on the Charleston Bar and became a total loss.
For the invasions of Île Bourbon and Île de France (Mauritius) the British government hired a number of transport vessels. Most of the transports were "country ships". Country ships were vessels that were registered in ports of British India such as Bombay and Calcutta, and that traded around India, with Southeast Asia, and China, but that did not sail to England without special authorization from the EIC. In addition, some were "regular ships" of the British East India Company (EIC), and some were "extra ships". Regular ships were on a long term contract with the EIC, and extra ships were vessels the EIC had chartered for one or more voyages.
The Java Medal is a campaign medal awarded by the Governor-General of India to soldiers of the armies of the Honourable East India Company (HEIC) who participated in the Invasion of Java in August and September 1811, during the Napoleonic Wars.
The Deccan Medal was the first campaign medal instituted by the East India Company (EIC). It was awarded to native Indian troops who took part in the major campaigns in India between 1778 to 1784. It is sometimes referred to as the Carnatic Medal.
The Egypt Medal is a campaign medal that was awarded by the Governor-General of India to members of the expeditionary force that travelled from India to take part in the 1801 Egyptian campaign, a part of the French Revolutionary Wars.
HMS Comet was launched in 1807 as a Thais-class fireship of the Royal Navy. In 1808 the class were re-rated as sloops, and in 1811 they were re-rated as 20-gun sixth rates. Comet participated in one action that resulted in her crew being awarded the Naval General Service Medal, and some other actions and captures. The Navy sold her in 1815. In 1816 she became an East Indiaman, sailing under a license from the British East India Company (EIC). She sailed between the United Kingdom and Ceylon. It was on one of these journeys that she was wrecked on Cole House Point on the River Thames on 9 August 1828.
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