Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Some of His Majesty's Ships cruizing before Marseilles have taken several Ships and Vessels
having the Flag of Algiers and laden with merchandise the produce of the West Indies and of
Spain - consequently these Ships acting in direct opposition to His Majesty's orders in
Council which permit the Vessels of the Barbary States to trade freely with the produce of
their own Country to ports in France but prohibit the produce of other countries being carried
by them - have been detained and sent to Gibraltar … it could not be understood that while
the Ports in France were by the decree of Bonaparte shut to all ships of European Powers -
that the produce of their colonies should be carried to them from Algiers.
The decree mentioned is the so-called Continental Blockade, by which Bonaparte
was attempting to subdue Britain by denying its trade with the continent of Europe
which was mostly by then under Napoleon's control. In its blockades of French
and Spanish ports (Toulon, Cadiz, Brest, etc. and Marseille), the Royal Navy was
attempting to reciprocate by denying France trade with countries outside the
Napoleonic Empire.
There is a discrepancy between Arago's statement that there were three
merchantmen and the naval records that Minstrel detained two. Perhaps the
schooner that Collingwood records as having been detained by
Tigre
was the third.
There is also a discrepancy of one day in the dates, but Arago was writing forty
years after the events, using diaries that he had been carrying during several years
of adventures, whereas Collingwood and the
Minstrel's
officers were recording the
events as they happened, keeping records under naval discipline.
Minstrel
had let Arago's ship go free. In his autobiography, Arago says that his
ship was carrying cotton, which was probably from America, but to Commander
Hollinworth the cargo apparently seemed Algerian. The ship was also Algerian, or
at least it must have seemed so from the evidence that was produced to Hollinworth
when he boarded the ship, since he did not take it as a prize. Arago himself was a
French official and might have been taken prisoner if Hollinworth had identified
him as such. A young student, he may not have looked like a French official after
all his adventures, and presumably (and somewhat uncharacteristically) he had kept
his mouth shut thus giving no evidence to sound like one. The crew of the Algerian
ship must have all appeared Algerian to Hollinworth and therefore he concluded
that the ship was not in violation of the terms of the Order in Council establishing
the blockade (although in actuality it was). The ship, including Arago, was let free
immediately after its capture on 30 June, 1809.
Arago was lucky not to have been detained. If he had been taken prisoner, he
would probably have been sent to Plymouth (via Gibraltar) and been imprisoned at
one of the prison hulks in the harbor. He might have been then sent to the gray,
granite Prisoner of War Depot that had been newly constructed on a foggy tor on
Dartmoor (now Dartmoor Prison) and was the home to several thousand French
prisoners. As a French civilian prisoner he might, at best, have been paroled to live
in some small Devon town, able to enjoy all the amenities that he could afford and
that were available within a mile of the town boundary. (Need it be added that what
was available in these towns would not have compared with what was available in
the sophistication of Paris?) True, there would have been the female company that
he so enjoyed but not the freedom, nor probably the mathematical and other intel-
