Magicienne was a frigate of the French Navy, lead ship of her class. The British captured her in 1781 and she served with the Royal Navy until her crew burned her in 1810 to prevent her capture after she grounded at Isle de France (now Mauritius). During her service with the Royal Navy she captured several privateers and participated in the Battle of San Domingo.
Magicienne was built to a design by Joseph-Marie-Blaise Coulomb at Toulon. She was the first of 12 vessels built to her design.
She served in Orvilliers' fleet under Chevalier de Boades, and later under Captain Janvre de la Bouchetière[2][3]HMSChatham captured her on 2 September 1781 off Cape Ann. In the action the French lost 60 men killed and 40 wounded,[lower-alpha 1] including Ensign Dethan killed and La Bouchetière wounded;[3] the British lost one man killed and one man wounded.[4] She was described as being of 800 tons, 36 guns and 280 men.[5]
A prize crew took her to Halifax, where she was recommissioned in the Royal Navy as HMS Magicienne under Thomas Graves, on the North America station. He then sailed her to Jamaica in December.[6]
British service
Magicienne dismasted after her fight against Sibylle (January 1783).
On 15 July 1782, Magicienne and Prudent captured three French merchant vessels carrying sugar from Martinique to Europe. These were the ship Tea Bloom, the snowBalmboom, and the brig Juno. Juno was also carrying rum.[7]
HMS Magicienne participated in the French Revolutionary Wars (1792-1802). The ship was substantially refitted at the shipyard of J. Graham, in Harwich being relaunched on Monday 18 January 1793, an event celebrated with a ball held at the Three Cups, Harwich.[8]
On 1 November 1796, Magicienne, under the command of Captain William Henry Ricketts, captured the French brig Cerf Volant,[10] (enseigne de vaisseau Camau), off San Domingo. Cerf Volant was flying a flag of truce and had on board a midshipman and several British seamen, prisoners from Hindostan, to give the appearance that Cerf Volant was a cartel.[lower-alpha 3] She was carrying delegates from the Southern Department of St. Domingo to the French Legislature, and hidden dispatches for the Directory General,[11] that a search the next day uncovered. The hidden dispatches violated the truce flag and made Cerf Volant a legitimate prize. The search also uncovered a box of money.[12] Though Cerf-Volant was only three years old, the Royal Navy did not take her into service.[lower-alpha 4]
In early 1797, Magicienne captured two privateers named Poisson Volant. One was armed with 12 guns and had a crew of 80 men, and the other was armed with five guns and had a crew of 50 men.[14] One was captured on 13 January, and the other on 16 February. Bounty bills (head money) was paid in September 1827.[lower-alpha 5] A later account narrates that Poisson Volant was a Dutch privateer, out of Curacao, and that Magicienne sent her into Jamaica to be condemned as a prize.
In late 1797 or early 1798, Magicienne, the troopship Regulus, and the brig-sloopDiligence captured the French privateer Brutus, of nine guns.[16]
After the crew of Hermione mutinied and murdered her captain, Hugh Pigot, in 1797, Magicienne was involved in the efforts to capture the mutineers and bring them to trial.
On 23 November 1800 Captain Sir Richard Strachan in Captain chased a French convoy in to the Morbihan, where it sheltered under the protection of shore batteries and a 24-gun corvette. Magicienne was able to force the corvette Réolaise onto the shore at Port Navalo.[17] The hired armedcuttersSuworow, Nile and Lurcher then towed in four boats with a cutting-out party of seamen and marines from Captain and Magicienne. Although the cutting-out party landed under heavy grape and small arms fire, it was able to set the corvette on fire; shortly thereafter Réolaise blew up. Only one British seaman, a crewman from Suworow, was killed.[18] However, Suworow's sails and rigging were so badly cut up that Captain had to tow her.[19]
On 20 January 1801, Magicienne, with Doris in sight, captured in the Channel the French letter of marqueHuron, which was returning from Mauritius with a highly valuable cargo of ivory, cochineal, indigo, tea, sugar, pepper, cinnamon, ebony, etc. Ogilvy described her as a "remarkable fine Ship, fails well, is pierced for Twenty Guns, had Eighteen mounted, but threw them all overboard except Four during the Chace; I think her a Vessel well calculated for His Majesty's Service."[20] The Navy ignored his recommendation.
Napoleonic Wars
On 24 July 1804 Amethyst, while in company with Magicienne, captured Agnela.[21]
Early in March 1805, Magicienne and Reindeer sent two boats each, under the command of Lieutenant John Kelly Tudor[22] of Reindeer, to cut out a 4-gun schooner from under a battery in Aguadilla Bay, Puerto Rico.
In 1806, while under the command of Captain Adam Mackenzie, she cruised in the Caribbean. On 25 January 1806, Magicienne was in company with Penguin in the Mona Passage when Magicienne captured the Spanish packet shipCarmen after a chase of 12 hours. Carmen was pierced for 14 guns but carrying only two, and had a crew of 18 men under the command of an officer of the same rank as a commander in the British Navy.[23]
Magicienne joined John Thomas Duckworth's squadron on 5 February, which led to her taking part in the Battle of San Domingo. Duckworth sent Magicienne and Acasta to reconnoitre, and it was they that signaled that the French were at anchor, but getting under way. Duckworth formed up the smaller ships, Acasta, Magicienne, Kingfisher and Epervier, windward of the line-of-battle ships to keep them out of the action.[24]
Donegal forced the surrender of the Brave and directed Acasta to take possession of her, whilst the Donegal moved on to engage the other French ships. Brave was one of the three that the British captured, the other two being the Jupiter and the Alexandre. Their captains drove two French ships, the flagship, Impérial, and the Diomède, on shore between Nizao and Point Catalan, their hulls broadside to the beach and their bottoms stove in by the reefs that lay offshore, to prevent their capture.
On 8 February Duckworth sent boats from Acasta and Magicienne to the wrecks. Boarding unopposed, the boat parties removed the remaining French crewmen as prisoners and set both ships on fire.[25][lower-alpha 6] Lastly, in 1847 the Admiralty awarded the surviving claimants from the action the Naval General Service Medal with clasp "St. Domingo".
On 18 August Magicienne was in company with Penguin, Franchise, and Veteran as they escorted a fleet of 109 merchantmen from Jamaica to Britain. The convoy cleared the Gulf of Florida. On 10 August a Spanish ship-of-the-line approached but Veteran and Magicienne chased her into Havana.[28] Between 19 and 23 August the convoy ran into a gale that did not fully abate until 25 August. Initial reports had nine vessels foundering, with the crew of some being saved;[29] later reports put the loss at 13 merchant vessels foundered and two abandoned but later salvaged. Franchise lost her fore-mast and main-top-mast but together with Penguin managed to bring 71 merchant vessels back to England. (Others arrived earlier or later, and some went to America.)[30]Magicienne, however, was so badly damaged that she had to put in at Bermuda for repairs.[28]
Magicienne, aground, being scuttled at the Battle of Grand Port.
In March 1810, Magicienne was part of a frigate squadron comprising Iphigenia and Leopard, later joined by Nereide and Sirius.
The summer of 1810 saw a campaign against the French Indian Ocean possessions; The Île de Bourbon (Réunion) was captured in July. In August, attention was turned to Mauritius, where the British attempted to land troops to destroy coastal batteries and signals around Grand Port; the attempt turned sour, however, when two French forty-gun frigates, Bellone and Minerve, the 18-gun corvette Victor, and two East Indiaman prizes entered the harbour and took up defensive positions at the head of the main entrance channel. The French also moved the channel markers to confuse the British approach.
In the run-up to the battle, Sirius re-captured Windham, which the French had captured a second time in the action of 3 July 1810. On the 23 August 1810 the British squadron entered the channel at Grand Port. Sirius was the first to run aground, followed by Magicienne and Néréide. Iphigenia prudently anchored in the channel some distance from the action. The French vessels concentrated all their gunfire first against Néréide and then against Magicienne.
The battle continued without interruption all night and on the 24 August the French boarded the defenceless Néréide. Once the French flag was hoisted on what was left of the foremast of the Néréide, Magicienne and the Sirius began an intense cross fire against their enemies. Still, in the evening her crew had to abandon Magicienne, setting her on fire as they left her. Magicienne lost eight men killed and 20 wounded.[6]
The battle cost the British all four frigates, including Iphigenia and Sirius.
Notes
↑ The New-York Gazette of 22 September 1781 gives a figure of 155 killed and wounded on Magicienne. Cited in [3]
↑ Sibylle was the name vessel of a five-ship class of 32-gun frigates designed by Sané.
↑ It is not clear how the French came to have as prisoners men from Hindostan. They may have been from a tender to Hindostan or prize.
↑ Cerf-Volant had been launched at Nantes on 8 August 1793. She was the name ship of her two-vessel class of 12-gun brigs, her sister-ship being Papillon.[13]
↑ A first-class share of the money for the first Poisson Volant and two other vessels was worth £457 4s 6¼d; a first-class share for the second Poisson Volant was worth £80 18s 10½d. A fifth-class share, that of a seaman, for the first Poisson Volant and the two other vessels was worth £1 11s 5d; a fifth-class share for the second Poisson Volant was worth 3s 11½d.[15]
↑ Penguin shared by agreement in Magicienne's prize money from the action. At the second and final distribution of prize money for the battle, a seaman on Magicienne received £1 19s 7d.[26] Because of the sharing arrangement, this was 14s 7d less what seamen on the other British vessels received. Magicienne and Penguin also shared in the proceeds of sundry parts and stores salvaged from the wrecked French vessels.[27]
HMS Phoebe was a 36-gun fifth rate of the Royal Navy. She had a career of almost twenty years and fought in the French Revolutionary Wars, the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812. Overall, her crews were awarded six clasps to the Naval General Service Medals, with two taking place in the French Revolutionary Wars, three during the Napoleonic Wars and the sixth in the War of 1812. Three of the clasps carried the name Phoebe. During her career, Phoebe sailed to the Mediterranean and Baltic seas, the Indian Ocean, South East Asia, North and South America.
HMS Sirius was a 36-gun fifth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy. Between 1797 and 1805, the Sirius was engaged in maintaining the blockade of Napoleonic Europe. She was lost in 1810 when her crew scuttled her after she grounded during the Battle of Grand Port.
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.
The Battle of Grand Port was a naval battle between squadrons of frigates from the French Navy and the British Royal Navy. The battle was fought during 20–27 August 1810 over possession of the harbour of Grand Port on Isle de France during the Napoleonic Wars. The British squadron of four frigates sought to blockade the port to prevent its use by the French through the capture of the fortified Île de la Passe at its entrance. This position was seized by a British landing party on 13 August and, when a French squadron under Captain Guy-Victor Duperré approached the bay nine days later, the British commander, Captain Samuel Pym, decided to lure them into coastal waters where his forces could ambush them.
Admiral Sir Samuel Pym KCB (1778–1855) was a British admiral, brother of Sir William Pym.
Pomone was a 40-gun frigate of the French Navy, launched in 1785. The British captured her off the Île de Batz in April 1794 and incorporated her into the Royal Navy. Pomone subsequently had a relatively brief but active career in the British Navy off the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts of France before suffering sufficient damage from hitting a rock to warrant being taken out of service and then broken up in 1803.
HMS Acasta was a 40-gun Royal Navy fifth-rate frigate. She saw service in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, as well as the War of 1812. Although she never took part in any notable single-ship actions nor saw action in a major battle though she was at the Battle of San Domingo, she captured numerous prizes and rid the seas of many Spanish, French and American privateers. She was finally broken up in 1821.
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.
Cléopâtre was a 32-gun Vénus class frigate of the French Navy. She was designed by Jacques-Noël Sané, and had a coppered hull. She was launched in 1781, and the British captured her in 1793. She then served the Royal Navy as HMS Oiseau until she was broken up in 1816.
HMS Iphigenia was a Royal Navy 36-gun Perseverance-class fifth-rate frigate. She was built at Chatham Dockyard by Master Shipwright Robert Seppings.
The French frigate Minerve was originally launched in 1788 for the Portuguese Navy, where she served under the dual names of Nossa Senhora da Vitória and Minerva. The French Navy captured and renamed her in November 1809, after which she played a notable role in the Indian Ocean campaign of 1809-1811, participating in the defeat of a Royal Navy frigate squadron at the Battle of Grand Port, but at the surrender of Mauritius in December 1810, the ship was handed over to the British, and seems to have been broken up soon afterwards.
Néréide was a Sibylle-class, 32-gun, copper-hulled frigate of the French Navy. On 22 December 1797 HMS Phoebe captured her and she was taken into British service as HMS Nereide. The French recaptured her at the Battle of Grand Port, only to lose her again when the British took Isle de France, in 1810. After the Battle of Grand Port she was in such a poor condition that she was laid up and sold for breaking up in 1816.
Admiral of the Fleet Sir Lucius Curtis, 2nd Baronet, KCB, DL was a senior officer of the Royal Navy during the nineteenth century. The son of Sir Roger Curtis, 1st Baronet, Lord Howe's flag captain at the Glorious First of June, Lucius served during the Napoleonic Wars and was heavily involved in the Mauritius campaign of 1810. During this campaign, Curtis commanded the frigate HMS Magicienne with the blockade squadron under Josias Rowley and was still in command when the ship was destroyed at the Battle of Grand Port. Magicienne grounded on a coral reef early in the engagement and despite the best efforts of Curtis and his crew, the ship had to be abandoned, Curtis setting her on fire to prevent her subsequent capture.
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.
The hired armed cutter Black Joke was a cutter that served the Royal Navy from 12 January 1795 to 19 October 1801. In 1799 she was renamed Suworow, and under that name she captured numerous prizes before she was paid off after the Treaty of Amiens.
His Majesty's Hired armed cutter Lurcher was a 12-gun cutter that served the Royal Navy from 15 August 1795 until 15 January 1801 when a French privateer captured her in the Channel.
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.
Poisson Volant, was a popular name for French vessels, including naval vessels and privateers. Between 1760 and 1814, warships of the Royal Navy captured numerous privateers named Poisson Volant.
HMS Resolution was a cutter that the Royal Navy purchased in 1779. She captured two French privateers in 1781 and a Dutch privateer in 1783 after a single ship action. Resolution captured one more small French privateer in June 1797; later that month Resolution went missing in the North Sea, presumed to have foundered.
HMS Musquito was a 16-gun ship-sloop, previously the French privateer Magicienne or Petite Magicienne. The Royal Navy captured her in March 1798. After the Spanish captured Musquito in September 1798, she served in the Spanish Navy until she was broken up in 1805.
References
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Demerliac, Alain (1996). La Marine de Louis XVI: Nomenclature des Navires Français de 1774 à 1792 (in French). Éditions Ancre. ISBN9782906381230. OCLC468324725.
Demerliac, Alain (1999). La Marine de la Révolution: Nomenclature des Navires Français de 1792 à 1799 (in French). Éditions Ancre. ISBN9782906381247. OCLC492783890.
Dye, Ira (1994). The fatal cruise of the Argus: two captains in the War of 1812. Naval Institute Press.
Hamilton, Sir Richard Vesey, ed. (1901) The Letters and Papers of Admiral of the Fleet Sir Thomas Byam Martin, G.C.B., Vol. 3. (Naval Records Society, Vol. 19).
James, William (1837), The Naval History of Great Britain, from the Declaration of War by France in 1793, to the Accession of George IV., vol.1, R. Bentley
Winfield, Rif (2008). British Warships in the Age of Sail 1793–1817: Design, Construction, Careers and Fates. Seaforth Publishing. ISBN978-1-86176-246-7.
Winfield, Rif; Roberts, Stephen S. (2015). French Warships in the Age of Sail 1786–1861: Design Construction, Careers and Fates. Seaforth Publishing. ISBN978-1-84832-204-2.
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