Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
but speak eloquently of life in the Royal Navy. Like an adventurous seaman, the log
has been active at sea in all weathers and like a seaman too old to fight, it ended its
service days in the Admiralty, confined to an office ashore and spending its years
shelved in retirement. Only occasionally, as in the case of my visit, does the log
come alive again, recounting its stories.
At the time Arago arrived in Marseille, HMS
Minstrel
was blockading the
approaches. Collingwood had orders to prevent supplies from reaching France in
order to put pressure on the French government at its home. From time to time he
dispatched individual ships to “cause annoyance to the enemy's trade.” His British
warships captured all the French-flagged merchant ships that they could and chased
others until they escaped or ran aground. They fired their cannon at shore-based
semaphore stations and harbors and their young midshipmen and brawling sailors
raided military installations to kill soldiers, burn supplies and destroy Napoleon's
buildings. It was under the instructions to “cause annoyance” that the British war-
ship, one of the squadron commanded by Collingwood, intercepted Arago's convoy
as it approached Marseille; the ships were obviously doing something which would
become useful to France, unless prevented.
On Friday 30 June, 1809, as
Minstrel
approached Marseille from the south, the
day began as cloudy and rainy with distant rumbles of thunder and lightning. It was
a warm summer day, with thunderstorms threatening in the mountains on the shore,
but the weather cleared at dawn, and at 7:30 a.m. the lookout at the mast head saw
three sailing vessels to the south west heading for Marseille. The
Minstrel
set all
sails to chase them and outran them, catching them at 9:20 about 30 km from their
destination. The three vessels hoisted “Algerine” colors and stopped sail. Some of
the crew from the
Minstrel
boarded them and detained two of the vessels “on sus-
picion of their carrying on Illicit Trades.”
The
Minstrel
put a petty officer and a party of men on board the two detained
vessels and escorted them overnight to Collingwood at the Hyères Islands. In the
National Maritime Museum, Greenwich is Collingwood's journal (NMM reference
COL 13b) in which he records letters he has written to the Admiralty in London
and other day-to-day-occurrences. On 1 July, 1809 he records
Minstrel's
success in
capturing two Algerian vessels the day before, but there are no other incidents like
the one described by Arago in his autobiography. Collingwood's journal says that
the sloop HMS
Minstrel
detained “two ships under Algerine colours bound for
Marseille from Algiers.” He goes on to state, “At noon, the
Tigre
detained a schooner
which was passing near the fleet under similar circumstances. Distributed the
Algerines to several of the ships and ordered the commander of the
Minstrel
to
proceed with the vessels immediately to Gibraltar from whence he was to rejoin me
as speedily as possible.” With the schooner in tow,
Minstrel
escorted its convoy of
two other prizes to Gibraltar, which they reached on 17 July 1809.
Minstrel
returned
to the Toulon blockade and on 21 October 1809 took part in a major battle with the
French fleet as it tried unsuccessfully to break out from Toulon to run a convoy to
Spain to re-supply the army there.
In the letter Collingwood wrote to the British consul in Algiers, Mr H. N. Blanckley
(the letter is in the National Archives, TNA reference FO 3/11), he explained the
British perspective on the illegality of the trade that Arago was party to:
