Utterly Useless Royal Navy Geek Posting

Fans of Patrick O'Brian who have read The Mauritius Command, one of my favorite of the Aubrey/Maturin series, will recognize the name of Admiral Hamelin, the commander of the French squadron which defended the islands of Mauritius and Reunion against the British, and the victor of the Battle of Grand Port, August 23-24, 1810, (pictured above) in which a squadron of four British frigates was destroyed.

Well I happen to be in the midst of Anthony Brown's Ill-Starred Captains, the story of rival British and French missions in 1801 to explore the southern coast of Australia. The English ship, the Investigator, was commanded by Captain Matthew Flinders. The French expedition consisted of two ships, the Geographe and the Naturaliste. The Geographe was under the command of the expedition's commodor, Nicholas Baudin. But who should be the captain of the Naturaliste but M. Hamelin?

Even though these expeditions were carried out in the middle of the Napoleonic Wars, Britain and France both gave guarantees of safe conduct to each other's ships in the name of scientific enlightenment, a delightful practice. And, in fact, the expeditions ran into each other at Encounter Bay, South Australia in March, 1802. (I believe Brown's book was released to commemorate the 200th anniversary of this meeting. Here is a round up of bicentennary sites.)

It should be noted, though, that despite the pass they had been granted and although M. Baudin himself doesn't seem to have had anything to do with it, a number of the French officers and scientists used a winter re-fit stop at Port Jackson to spy on British military preparedness and sent on their findings to Boneparte with the idea of a French military descent on the colony. And ironically, Capt. Flinders was unjustly taken up as a spy when he put into Mauritius for repairs and held there for a number of years. (What role Hamelin might have played, I don't know. But Baudin was railroaded by his officers and crew (and died shortly thereafter) and Hamelin wound up in command of France's most critical Indian Ocean military assets, so you do the math.)

Anyhoo, just thought this was interesting.