Admiral of the Fleet James Gambier, 1st Baron Gambier, was a Royal Navy officer. After seeing action at the capture of Charleston during the American Revolutionary War, he saw action again, as captain of the third-rate HMS Defence, at the battle of the Glorious First of June in 1794, during the French Revolutionary Wars, gaining the distinction of commanding the first ship to break through the enemy line.
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 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 were 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.
Tyrannicide was a 74-gun ship of the line of the French Navy.
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.
Vice-Admiral Sir John Tremayne Rodd, KCB was an officer of the Royal Navy noted for his services during the Napoleonic Wars. Rodd served in a number of ships, including HMS San Josef under Admiral Sir Charles Cotton and HMS Indefatigable during the Battle of the Basque Roads. In 1809, he married the daughter of James Rennell and in 1825 was promoted to rear-admiral, later advancing to vice-admiral and knighted. He died in 1838.
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 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.
The Battle of San Domingo was the last fleet engagement of the Napoleonic Wars, contested off the Southern coast of the Spanish colonial Captaincy General of Santo Domingo, then under French occupation, on 6 February 1806. A British squadron of seven ships of the line under Vice-Admiral Sir John Thomas Duckworth surprised and destroyed a French squadron of five ships of the line led by Contre-amiral Corentin Urbain Leissègues as the French sailed westwards along the San Domingo coast. Using his superior numbers and speed, Duckworth struck at the head of the French line with his leading ships while the slower eastern division of his squadron intercepted and captured the French stragglers. The only French ships to escape were two frigates and a corvette – three ships of the line were captured and two destroyed, including Leissègues' flagship, the 120-gun Impérial. French casualties were estimated as more than 1,500 men killed and wounded and the British suffered nearly 350 casualties in the engagement, which lasted for just over two hours.
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.
Allemand's expedition of 1805, often referred to as the Escadre invisible 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 Navy Channel 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.
Zacharie Jacques Théodore Allemand was a French admiral.
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.
HMS Foxhound was an 18-gun Cruizer-class brig-sloop built by King at Dover and launched in 1806. She participated in the battle of the Basque Roads in early 1809 and foundered later that year.
Jacques Bergeret was a French naval officer and admiral.
The Court-martial of James, Lord Gambier, was a notorious British naval legal case during the summer of 1809, in which Admiral Lord Gambier requested a court-martial to examine his behaviour during the Battle of Basque Roads in April of the same year. Noted for the acrimony and corruption of proceedings, it has been described as "one of the ugliest episodes in the internal history of the Royal Navy".
Ann and Amelia was a three-decker merchant ship launched in 1781. The British East India Company (EIC) twice employed her as an "extra ship", first when she went out to India to sail in trade in that market, and again in 1803 when she sailed back from India to Britain. On her return to Britain the Admiralty purchased her in June 1804 and converted her to a 44-gun fifth rate with the name HMS Mediator. The Navy converted her to a storeship in 1808, but then expended her as a fireship at the battle of the Basque Roads in April 1809.
HMS Doterel, was an 18-gun Cruizer-class brig-sloop of the British Royal Navy. Launched on 6 October 1808, she saw action in the Napoleonic Wars and in the War of 1812. In February 1809 she took part in the Battle of Les Sables-d'Olonne, then in April the Battle of Basque Roads. She was laid up in 1827 at Bermuda, but not broken up until 1855.
HMS Imperieuse was a 38-gun fifth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy. Built in Ferrol, Spain, for the Spanish Navy she was launched as Medea in 1797. In 1804 she was part of a squadron carrying gold from South America to Spain that was seized by the British while Spain and Britain were at peace. Medea was subsequently taken into service with the Royal Navy and was briefly named HMS Iphigenia before being renamed Imperieuse in 1805.
HMS Redpole was a sailing brig of the Royal Navy, launched in July 1808. She was 238 52⁄94(tons bm), armed with eight 18-pounder carronades and two 6-pound bow chasers, and carried a crew of 75. One of the notorious Cherokee class, dubbed 'coffin brigs' because of the large numbers that were wrecked or foundered, she was sunk in action in August 1828 but prior to that played an active part in the Napoleonic Wars.
