Tarleton was a 14-gun brig launched in 1780 at Glasgow. She was a letter of marque that made one capture. The French captured Tarleton in October 1782 in the Caribbean. They took her back to France in 1783 and she was subsequently stationed at Brest, where she served in the Mediterranean. The British recaptured her at Toulon in 1793 and she then served in the Mediterranean until no later than 1798 when she disappears from the lists.
Tarleton's origins are uncertain. Though the name was unusual, it was not unique at the time. There were at least two Tarleton's in French hands in early 1783, with different commanders.
Supposedly the Tarleton of this article had been a vessel the Royal Navy had captured and lost to the French in 1782.[2] However, there are no readily accessible Royal Navy records of any capture, service, or subsequent loss. There was a mercantile Tarlton [sic], of New York, with Young, owner, that escaped Yorktown shortly before its fall in 1781. The ambiguous report of "Jonas Rider, a Black Man", raises the possibility that the French captured this vessel, only to lose it to the British.[3] If the French then recaptured it, it may have been the Tarleton that the Royal Navy reportedly captured and lost in 1782.
Tarleton (I)
The Archives of the State of Maryland record on 3 January 1783 that two armed vessels, Pole Cat and Tarleton, had arrived from Baltimore and sailed into Chesapeake Bay to drive out the British forces there.[4] On 25 February there was a memo to Captan de Barrass, of Tarleton.[5] On 19 March a second memo mentioned Captain de Barrass of the sloop Tarleton.[6] Lastly, a memo on 19 May discusses the return to Tarleton of her sick that have recovered.[7]
Tarleton (II)
In late 1782 Tarleton, Captain Lecamus, was at Saint Domingue when the governor sent her to Boston. On 3 January 1783, the French brig Tarleton, of 14 guns, and under the command of lieutenant de vaisseau le Camus, encountered an 18-gun brig that escaped Tarleton only by its superior sailing. Tarleton forced the enemy brig to abandon a Spanish prize that it had taken. Tarleton suffered one man wounded in the engagement.[8] The mention does not make clear where this occurred, but a second mention is more specific.
On 9 February, Tarleton was leaving Port-au-Prince, having returned there for repairs. As she left to resume her voyage to Boston, she encountered a British frigate and a brig. M. de Camus sailed Tarleton into a cove. There he found two guns that he combined with four of his own to form a shore battery. With this he forced the English vessels to sail off.[9] Eventually she did reach Boston.[10]
The issue then is, if one Tarleton was in the Chesapeake between January and May 1783, which was the Tarleton that was at Saint-Domingue in January–February 1783? The most likely candidate is Tarleton, launched in 1780 at Glasgow.
She was of 140 tons (bm), was armed with fourteen 3-pounder guns, and her owner was Crosbie.[11][12] As a privateer under the command of A. Taylor she captured the American vessel Tom Lee, Buchanan, master, on 23 March 1781 after an engagement of two and a half hours during which Tom Lee suffered one man killed; Tarleton had no casualties. Tom Lee had been sailing from Baltimore to Nantes with 140 hogsheads of tobacco valued at £9000.[13]Tom Lee was armed with 12 guns and had a crew of 45 men.[14] Shortly after this M. Reed became master and her trade became Liverpool-Barbados. She made a voyage to Saint Lucia and return but on 19 October 1782 the French captured her and took her into Cap François.[15] Her captor was apparently Aigrette.[16]
Her entry in the 1783 volume of Lloyd's Register carried the annotation "Taken".[17]
The remaining question then is, which of the two Tarletons is the one that the French navy took back to France?
French service
When Tarleton reached Boston, she arrived too late to meet with the troops of Louis-Philippe de Vaudreuil, Lieutenant General of the Naval Armies, or even to meet them at sea. The force of 4000 men under General Rochembeau had left Boston on 20 December, bound for the Gulf.[18]
On 29 April 1783 enseigne de vaisseau Aristide-Aubert du Petit-Thouars took command of Tarleton, which he described as a brig of fourteen 4-pounder guns. He exchanged with de Camus, who transferred to the 32-gun frigate Amazone.[16]Tarleton and Amazone then escorted a convoy from Saint-Domingue to Brest, France. On his arrival, Petit-Thouars suggested that he be given command of Tarleton for a voyage of exploration. However, the navy paid-off Tarleton at Brest. Later, in 1784, the navy transferred her to the Mediterranean Fleet at Toulon.
Between 1784 and 1788, Tarleton was under the command of Capitaine de fregate Comte Laurent-Jean-François Truguet. She carried the French ambassador Choiseul-Gouffier, and his suite, to his post at Constantinople. She then sailed around the Bosphorus, Marmara, and the whole of the Middle East. Truguet mapped the coasts of the Ottoman Empire and took Choiseul-Gouffier on an exploration of what was believed to be the area where Troy had stood. While in command of Tarleton, Truguet wrote a monograph on tactics and another on naval maneuvers; these were translated into Turkish and printed at Constantinople.
In 1790 or so, Tarleton was under the command of Sous-lieutenant de vaisseaux Féraud. He sailed her from Toulon to Milo, Sicily, via Tunis and Malta. Then she escorted French merchant vessels sailing from Smyrna to Cerigo.[19]
Tarleton then reappears at the siege of Toulon, under the command of "Maselet".[20] There Royalist forces turned over to the Anglo-Spanish force the French naval vessels in the port. Royalist Lieutenant de vaisseau Louis-Joseph-Felix-Nöel Damblard de Lansmatre then commanded her in October as part of a small squadron that patrolled the Îles d'Hyères to suppress piracy. When the Anglo-Spanish force had to leave in December, they took with them the best vessels, including Tarleton (or Tarleston), and tried to burn the remainder.[21][lower-alpha 1]
British service
After the Siege of Bastia had ended in May 1794, Admiral Lord Hood, sought out a French squadron consisting of seven ships of the line and some frigates. Hood sighted them on 10 June and drove them into Gourjean Bay.[lower-alpha 2] The Weather prevented a conventional attack and Lieutenant Charles Brisbane of Britannia, proposed a fire ship attack. Hood accepted the plan and the British converted Tarleton into a fireship under Brisbane's command. However, on the eve of the attack, the French sortied, forcing Hood to abandon the plan and to retire.[24]
Hood nevertheless promoted Brisbane to commander on 1 July and to command of Tarleton. He served in her during the remainder of that year and part of the next in the squadron acting in the Gulf of Genoa, under the immediate orders of Nelson.[25]
Brisbane and Tarleton spent some time blockading Gourjean Bay, and then protecting the trade between Bastia and Leghorn.[24]
On the morning of 9 March 1795, Admiral Hotham put to sea heading for Corsica in search of the French fleet. As yet unaware of the fate of Berwick, he sent Tarleton ahead to San Fiorenzo to order Berwick to join him off Cap Corse. Tarleton reported back to the fleet that night, giving Hotham news of Berwick's capture, and presumably an updated location of the French fleet, as Hotham changed his course, heading north-west. The following morning on 10 March the British came in sight of the French fleet, now beating northwards back to Toulon against a south-west wind.
At the subsequent battle of Genoa (14 March 1795), Tarleton was in the seaboard or weather division under Vice-Admiral Samuel Goodall. After the battle, Meleager was towing Illustrious when she broke free of her tow. Then the accidental firing of a lower deck gun damaged the ship so that she took on water.[26]Illustrious attempted to anchor in Valence Bay (between Spezia and Leghorn) to ride out the bad weather that had descended upon her. Her cables broke, however, and she struck on rocks and had to be abandoned.[26]Lowestoffe and Tarleton took off her stores, and all her crew were saved.[26]
Shortly thereafter, Brisbane removed to the sloop Moselle.[24]
Captain Robert Redmill took command of Tarleton in July 1796. Redmill remained in command only a short time before transferring to another vessel. In September Lieutenant William Proby replaced Redmill. By this time Tarleton was in a wretched state, leaky and rotten. In December Admiral Jervis observed that she was "in extreme danger" of sinking even while undertaking a short voyage between two Mediterranean ports.[27]
Fate
On 21 October 1796 Captain Nelson wrote to Admiral Jervis that he, Nelson, was sending Tarleton to Jervis so that, as Jervis wanted, he could transfer Proby to Téméraire.[28][lower-alpha 3] Nelson wrote on 29 December that he expected to be able to sell Tarleton and Mignonne.[31] However, on 2 December Jervis wrote from Gibraltar to Lord Spencer, First Lord of the Admiralty, that he, Jervis, intended to transfer Proby to Peterell, and that Tarleton had been sold.[32] The British ended up burning Mignonne in 1797.
Notes
↑ Tarleton, under Damblar, was listed on 19 December as part of Rear Admiral Trogoff's squadron.[22] Although the item in the Naval Chronicle lists the then (1799) disposition of most of the vessels of this squadron, it does not mention Tarleton, which is unsurprising as by then she had been sold.
↑ Téméraire was a cutter or xebec that HMSDido captured in 1795 in the Mediterranean. The French navy had commissioned her in October 1793 as the 6-gun Révolutionaire and renamed her in 1794.[29] She was broken up in 1803.[30]
HMS Tonnant was an 80-gun ship of the line of the Royal Navy. She had previously been Tonnant of the French Navy and the lead ship of the Tonnant class. The British captured her in August 1793 during the Siege of Toulon but the French recaptured her when the siege was broken in December. Rear-Admiral Horatio Nelson captured her at Aboukir Bay off the coast of Egypt at the Battle of the Nile on 1 August 1798. She was taken into British service as HMS Tonnant. She went on to fight at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, during the Napoleonic Wars.
HMS Captain was a 74-gun third-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, launched on 26 November 1787 at Limehouse. She served during the French revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars before being placed in harbour service in 1799. An accident caused her to burn and founder in 1813. Later that year she was raised and broken up.
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 Goliath was a 74-gun third-rate ship of the line in the Royal Navy. She was built by Adam Hayes at Deptford Dockyard and launched on 19 October 1781. She was present at the Battle of Cape St Vincent, Battle of the Nile, and Battle of Copenhagen. She was broken up in 1815.
Justin-Bonaventure Morard de Galles was a French navy officer and admiral.
Solitaire was a 64-gun ship of the line of the French Navy, built by Antoine Groignard and launched in 1774, lead ship of her class. She was captured by the Royal Navy on 6 December 1782, and commissioned as the third rate HMS Solitaire. She was sold out of the Navy in 1790.
HMS Amphitrite was a 24-gun Porcupine-class sixth-rate post ship of the Royal Navy. She served during the American Revolution primarily in the economic war. On the one hand she protected the trade by capturing or assisting at the capture of a number of privateers, some of which the Royal Navy then took into service. On the other hand, she also captured many American merchant vessels, most of them small. Amphitrite was wrecked early in 1794.
HMS Camilla was a Royal Navy 20-gun Sphinx-class post ship. Camilla was built in Chatham Dockyard to a design by John Williams and was launched in 1776. She served in the American Revolution, the French Revolutionary Wars, and the Napoleonic Wars, before being sold in 1831.
HMS Nemesis was a 28-gun Enterprise-class sixth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy. The French captured her in 1795 at Smyrna, but in 1796 a squadron led by Barfleur brought her out of the neutral port of Tunis. Throughout her career she served under a number of commanders who would go on to have distinguished careers. She was converted to a troopship in 1812 and was sold in 1814.
The French frigate Mignonne was a one-off design by Jean-Baptiste Doumet-Revest; she was launched in 1767 at Toulon. Some notable French captains commanded her before the British captured her at Calvi in 1794 and took her into the Royal Navy as HMS Mignonne. She was burnt in 1797 as useless.
HMS Medea was a 28-gun Enterprise-class sixth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy. Medea was first commissioned in May 1778 under the command of Captain William Cornwallis. She was sold for breaking up in 1805.
HMS Sprightly was a 10-gun cutter of the Royal Navy, built to a design by John Williams, and the name ship of her two-vessel class of cutters. She was launched in 1778. The French captured and scuttled her off the Andulasian coast in 1801.
Robert Mann was an officer of the Royal Navy. He served during the American War of Independence and the French Revolutionary Wars, eventually rising to the rank of admiral of the red.
Louis-Jean-Nicolas Lejoille was a French Navy officer and captain.
Perçante was a 20-gun ship-corvette of the French Navy, built at Bayonne and launched in 1795. The British captured her in 1796 and took her into the Royal Navy under the name HMS Jamaica. They rated her as a sixth-rate 26-gun frigate. She served during both the French Revolutionary Wars and part of the Napoleonic Wars, during which she captured some privateers and participated in a boat attack. The Admiralty had her laid up in 1810 and sold her in 1814.
HMS Childers was a brig-sloop of the British Royal Navy, initially armed with 10 carriage guns which were later increased to 14 guns. The first brig-sloop to be built for the Navy, she was ordered from a commercial builder during the early years of the American War of Independence, and went on to support operations in the English Channel and the Caribbean. Laid up for a time after the end of the American War of Independence, she returned to service shortly before the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars. She had an active career in both the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, capturing numerous French privateers and during the Gunboat War participated in a noteworthy single-ship action. The navy withdrew her from service at the beginning of 1811, at which time she was broken up.
HMSEmerald was a 36-gun Amazon-class fifth rate frigate that Sir William Rule designed in 1794 for the Royal Navy. The Admiralty ordered her construction towards the end of May 1794 and work began the following month at Northfleet dockyard. She was completed on 12 October 1795 and joined Admiral John Jervis's fleet in the Mediterranean.
The French brig Duc de Chartres was built between 1779 and 1780 at Le Havre as a 24-gun privateer. As a privateer she captured one British warship before in 1781 the Royal Navy captured her. The Royal Navy took her into service as HMS Duc de Chartres. She then captured several American privateers and armed merchant vessels, and one French naval corvette in a noteworthy single-ship action. The Navy sold Duc de Chartres in 1784.
Révolutionnaire was a xebec that the French Navy commissioned in October 1793 and renamed Téméraire in 1794. HMS Dido captured her in the Mediterranean in 1795. She served for some time as HMS Temeraire until the Royal Navy changed her name to HMS Transfer. She was sold in 1803.
The action of 29 July 1782 was a minor naval engagement that took place towards the end of the American War of Independence. The British Royal Navy frigate HMS Santa Margarita captured the 36-gun French frigate Amazone off Cape Henry, but the next day the squadron under Louis-Philippe de Vaudreuil intervened and recaptured the frigate.
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