The French captured her at the debacle of Grand Port and in their service she participated in the capture of several British vessels. The British recaptured her and she served in the West Africa squadron (or "Preventative Squadron"), combating the slave trade. She was broken up in 1851 after serving for many years as a training ship.
British service
Captain Henry Lambert commissioned Iphigenia and on 28 January 1809 sailed her to the Cape of Good Hope and Bombay. On 13 September she was at Bombay where her crew helped fight, albeit unsuccessfully, the fire on Shah Ardaseer.[2]
In 1810 she joined the British squadron off Isle de France (now Mauritius).[3] The squadron consisted of Iphigenia, Leopard, Magicienne and Néréide. The squadron blockaded Isle de France from May, and started operations to attempt a take-over on 7 July 1810. Iphigenia was present at the capture of Réunion the next day.
The Battle of Grand Port; Iphigenia is first from the left. By Pierre Julien Gilbert.
On 10 August, the squadron, under Samuel Pym, landed parties to capture the Île de la Passe and take control of Port-Impérial, initiating the Battle of Grand Port. From 23 August, the British squadron faced off against a French squadron under Guy-Victor Duperré, comprising Minerve, Bellone and Victor. The French had moved the buoys marking the passage through the reef, causing Magicienne and Sirius to run aground and leading the British to scuttle them by fire. Néréide was captured. Iphigenia, which had been kept in reserve, attempted to flee, but French reinforcements under Hamelin - (Vénus, Manche and Créole) - intercepted her, forcing Iphigenia to strike her colours.
French service
Iphigenia was taken into French service as Iphigénie, under Pierre Bouvet, who had assumed command of the French squadron at Grand Port after Duperré was wounded, and had been promoted to Acting Captain 2nd class.[4][lower-alpha 1] She formed a squadron with Astrée and Entreprenant.
Africaine in French service
On 12 September 1810, Bouvet's squadron intercepted HMS Africaine (commodore Corbett) off Saint-Denis, as the frigate HMSBoadicea, the sloop HMSOtter and the brig HMSStaunch were sailing from the bay of Saint-Paul. Bouvet lured the British into pursuit until midnight. He sent Astrée forwards, as if Iphigénie would attempt to slow Africaine down to allow the rest of the squadron to flee. At three, Astrée regained her place at the rear of the squadron; the weather, which had been rough, improved somewhat, and in the moonlight Astrée suddenly found herself within gun range of Africaine, with Boadicea, Otter and Staunch out of sight. A gunnery duel followed immediately, in which Astrée had her rigging damaged; she closed in to Iphigénie, Africaine in close pursuit. Africaine soon found herself under fire from Iphigénie at point blank range, her guns still trained at Astrée. After exchanging broadsides and small arms fire for half an hour, during which the French had the upper hand, the British attempted a boarding. Iphigénie easily eluded Africaine, and gave Astrée an opportunity for raking Africaine's bow. At 4:30, Africaine struck her colours.
All Africaine's officers had been killed or wounded in the action, save for Colonel Barry, and only 69 men were uninjured. Bouvet was given Corbett's dagger, which he kept thereafter.[5] The French abandoned Africaine and Boadicea recaptured her the next day.[6]
On 3 December 1810, the Isle de France fell to the British. The British took over the ships moored at the island, including Iphigénie, Bellone and Astrée. They recommissioned Iphigénie, returning her to service as Iphigenia. Captain Thomas Caulfield then sailed her home to Britain where she was paid off in April 1811.[3]
Return to British service
After fitting out at Portsmouth from November to February 1812, Iphigenia was recommissioned in January under Captain Lucius Curtis. On 25 March 1812 she sailed with a convoy for the East Indies.[3]
Later, under Captain Fleetwood Pellew, Iphegenia sailed for the Mediterranean on 6 December. In February 1813, while still in the Mediterranean, she came under the command of Captain Andrew King.[3] On 17 April 1814, a British squadron consisting of Furieuse, Aboukir, Iphigenia, Swallow and Cephalus supported the successful assault on Genoa.[lower-alpha 2] Afterwards, King escorted a convoy of transports from Gibraltar to Bermuda.
Post war
She underwent repairs at Chatham between June and September 1815, and sailed for the East Indies again in October.[3] King returned home from the East Indies in command of the Third RateCornwallis.
In September 1816 Captain John Tancock took command of Iphigenia in Trincomalee.[lower-alpha 3] In December 1817 he sailed her back to Britain in company with Melville, whose fitting out in Bombay he had overseen.
Between January and June 1818 she was at Portsmouth having defects made good. Captain Hyde Parker took command on 15 March and eventually sailed Iphigenia for Jamaica.[3] She served also on the Quebec and Mediterranean stations before being paid off on 12 June 1821.
Cape Coast Castle
In 1821 Iphegenia was recommissioned under Captain Sir Robert Mends.[3] She then served in the anti-slave patrol off Africa with Mends as Commodore of the West Africa squadron. On 22 March 1822 she transported Sir Charles McCarthy, Governor of Sierra Leone, to Cape Coast Castle to assume the governorship of the Gold Coast.
On 15 April, her boats captured six slave ships on the Bonny River: Vigilante, Petite Betsey, Ursule, the Spanish Yeanam, Becaa, and the French brigantine Utile. In June Yeanam foundered in a tornado, claiming the lives of two officers, 16 men and 400 slaves; seven of the Iphigenia's crew managed to survive on the wreckage of the Yeanam.
In August 1822 Iphigenia was again in the Caribbean. On 27 August her barge, under the command of Lieutenant Stokes, in company with Zephyr, Harrison, which was on her way from Jamaica to London, captured a pirate schooner of about 250 tons (bm), six 18-pounder guns, and 60 men. The capture took place between Matanzas and Double Headed Shot Cays. The pirate had captured Sarah, of Nassau, but the barge and Zephyr recaptured her and sent her on her way. Iphigenia sent the prize into Havana.[10]
Fate
She was fitted at Woolwich between December 1832 and July 1833. Between 1833 and 1848, she was lent to the Marine Society as a training ship.
In 1849 she reported two attacks of cholera and one death between 1 and 12 July, inclusive.[11]
"The Commissioners for executing the office of Lord High Admiral of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland" offered Iphigenia for sale at Woolwich on 19 February 1850.[1] She was finally broken up at Deptford in May 1851.[3]
↑ A first-class share of the prize money for Genoa was worth £538 5s 2¾d; a sixth-class share, that of an ordinary seaman, was worth £3 12s 4d.[7] In a later, second payment, a first-class share was worth £169 2s 8d, while a sixth-class share was worth £1 2s 8¼d.[8] In a third payment, a first-class share of the prize money was worth £69 6s 1d; a sixth-class share, that of an ordinary seaman, was worth 9s 4d.[9]
The Mauritius Command is the fourth naval historical novel in the Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian, first published in 1977.
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.
Admiral Sir Josias Rowley, 1st Baronet,, known as "The Sweeper of the Seas", was an Anglo-Irish naval officer who commanded the campaign that captured the French Indian Ocean islands of Réunion and Mauritius in 1810.
Africaine was one of two 40-gun Preneuse-class frigates of the French Navy built to a design by Raymond-Antoine Haran. She carried twenty-eight 18-pounder and twelve 8-pounder guns. The British captured her in 1801, only to have the French recapture her in 1810. They abandoned her at sea as she had been demasted and badly damaged, with the result that the British recaptured her the next day. She was broken up in 1816.
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.
Astrée was a 44-gun Pallas-class frigate of the French Navy, launched at Cherbourg in 1809. In December of the next year she captured HMS Africaine. The Royal Navy captured Astrée in 1810 and took her into service under her French name, rating her as a 38-gun frigate, but then in 1811 recommissioned her as HMS Pomone. She served during the War of 1812 and was broken up in 1816.
HMS Boadicea was a frigate of the Royal Navy. She served in the Channel and in the East Indies during which service she captured many prizes. She participated in one action for which the Admiralty awarded the Naval General Service Medal. She was broken up in 1858.
HMS Dryad was a fifth-rate sailing frigate of the Royal Navy that served for 64 years, at first during the Napoleonic Wars and then in the suppression of slavery. She fought in a notable single-ship action in 1796 when she captured the French frigate Proserpine, an action that would later earn her crew the Naval General Service Medal. Dryad was broken up at Portsmouth in 1860.
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.
Pierre-François-Henri-Étienne Bouvet de Maisonneuve was a French Navy officer and privateer.
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.
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.
Captain Robert Corbet RN, often spelled Corbett, was an officer of the British Royal Navy during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars who was killed in action in highly controversial circumstances. Corbet was a strict disciplinarian, who regularly beat his men for the slightest infractions: so brutal was his regime that he provoked two mutinies, one simply at the rumour he was coming aboard a ship. These uprisings caused him to become even more vicious in his use of punishments and when he took his frigate HMS Africaine into action off Île Bourbon, his men failed to support him and may even have murdered him. In addition to his obsession with discipline and obedience, Corbet was regarded as an inefficient commander, whose standards of gunnery and training were so poor that when his ship did go into action it was ill-equipped to fight the French frigates stationed in the Indian Ocean.
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.
HMS Otter was a Royal Navy 16-gun Merlin-class sloop, launched in 1805 at Hull. She participated in two notable actions in the Indian Ocean and was sold in 1828.
HMS Staunch was a Royal Navy 12-gun Archer-class gun-brig, built by Benjamin Tanner and launched in 1804 at Dartmouth, Devon. She served in the Indian Ocean and participated in the action of 18 September 1810 before she foundered with the loss of all hands in 1811.
Entreprenant was the third of a sequence of vessels under the same name and with the same captain in the period 1807–1810. She served in the East Indies until the British captured her in 1810 and then had her broken up as unfit for further service.
Alexandre Louis Ducrest de Villeneuve was a French naval officer and admiral.
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