Action of 3 February 1812

Action of 3 February 1812
Part of the Napoleonic Wars
HMS Southampton in 1789
Date 3 February 1812 Location Gulf of Gonâve, Caribbean Sea Result British victory
Belligerents
United Kingdom	Haiti
Commanders and leaders
James Yeo	Gaspard †
Strength
1 frigate	1 frigate 1 corvette 1 brig
Casualties and losses
1 killed 10 wounded	105 killed 120 wounded 1 frigate captured

The action of 3 February 1812 was a single-ship action fought off the western coast of Haiti between the British Royal Navy and a Haitian warship during the Napoleonic Wars. It was fought against the background of the collapse of the First Empire of Haiti in 1806 after the Haitian Revolution; after Haiti became independent from French colonial rule in 1804, it was first ruled by Jean-Jacques Dessalines, who was assassinated in 1806 and replaced by two of his advisors, Henri Christophe and Alexandre Pétion. They divided the country between them and in the confused political situation that followed a number of minor fiefdoms appeared, including one ruled by warlord Jérôme-Maximilien Borgella in the department of Sud. The small Haitian Navy defected from Christophe to Borgella, who crewed his new ships with sailors from various countries.

In 1812, the British frigate HMS Southampton was stationed off Haiti under Captain Sir James Lucas Yeo, who was tasked with observing Haiti's political situation but was ordered not to interfere in the intermittent conflict between Christophe and Pétion. Yeo's orders did not mention Borgella's ships and Yeo reasoned that the Haitian Navy's flagship, the 44-gun frigate Heureuse Réunion under the command of a French privateer named Gaspard, presented a serious threat to international trade in the region.

Sailing to intercept Heureuse Réunion, Yeo discovered her in the Gulf of Gonâve on 3 February and ordered Gaspard to surrender. He refused to do so, and the two frigates exchanged shots at 06:30. The superior seamanship and discipline on Southampton prevented Gaspard from boarding her with the larger crew under his command, and within half an hour Heureuse Réunion was dismasted and battered. At 07:45 she surrendered, with Yeo depositing the remaining crew ashore and bringing Heureuse Réunion to Port Royal, Jamaica. At Jamaica, his actions were approved by his superiors and Heureuse Réunion, renamed Améthyste, was returned to Christophe by the British.

Background

During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, the Caribbean Sea was initially an important theatre of naval conflict, as ships operating from the various French, British, Spanish and Dutch colonies in the region preyed on enemy trade. However, in the Caribbean campaign of 1803–1810, the British military launched a series of co-ordinated amphibious operations which captured and occupied all French and Dutch colonies in the Caribbean, sharply reducing conflict in the region. With the threat of attacks on Britain's trade there significantly reduced, the Royal Navy correspondingly reduced their presence in the Caribbean and remaining British warships were sent to observe trouble spots in the region, which in 1812 included the independent nation of Haiti.

Haiti was originally the French colony of Saint-Domingue. From 1791 onwards, a lengthy and bloody conflict known as the Haitian Revolution raged in Saint-Domingue, which in which armies of Black troops led by Toussaint Louverture and then Jean-Jacques Dessalines secured independence from France by 1804, the first Caribbean territory to do so. After the Napoleonic Wars broke out in 1803, French reinforcements for their garrison in Saint-Domingue were delayed and intercepted by the British navy, which blockaded the colony and accepted the surrenders of the last French garrisons in 1804, removing them and their dependents to prevent a massacre.

Dessalines subsequently established himself as emperor of the First Empire of Haiti, but his reign was cut short in 1806 when his closest advisors, Henri Christophe and Alexandre Pétion organised his assassination. After Dessalines' death, Christophe established the State of Haiti in the north and Pétion founded the Republic of Haiti in the south, with the two states waging a constant low-level civil war until 1820. Many minor warlords sprang up during this period, especially in the south, where Pétion gave parcels of land for his followers to establish their own private fiefdoms. One such warlord was Jérôme-Maximilien Borgella, who took over command of a small fiefdom in the department of Sud following the death of its previous ruler, André Rigaud, on 18 September 1811.

In early 1809, the French sent a number of reinforcement convoys to their blockaded Caribbean colonies in the hope of strengthening the garrisons before they were invaded by the British. Large numbers of French ships, including four frigates, were lost in these missions and only a few reached their destinations successfully. Among these failed attempts was Troude's expedition to the Caribbean, which arrived in April 1809 at the Îles des Saintes. Finding that Guadeloupe was the only French colony in the region not under British occupation, Amable Troude made plans to anchor at Basse-Terre and unload his supplies, but was blockaded in the Îles des Saintes by a British squadron under Vice-Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane. Attempting to break out on 14 April, Troude led his main squadron northwest towards Puerto Rico while two en flûte frigates, Félicité and Furieuse, slipped out northeast to Basse-Terre, arriving there safely. Troude's squadron was defeated on 17 April, but Félicité and Furieuse remained at Basse-Terre until 14 June, when they attempted to break out and return to France laden with trade goods. The British were soon in pursuit and on 18 June the frigate HMS Latona captured Félicité without a fight. Furieuse was captured a month later in the North Atlantic. Félicité was 24 years old and was therefore considered too antiquated for commissioning in the Royal Navy; instead she was sold to Christophe to form the nucleus of the new Haitian Navy under the name Améthyste.

Battle

An 1810 portrait of Yeo by Adam Buck

At some point in January 1812 the Haitian Navy defected, for reasons unknown, from Christophe to Borgella. Borgella placed a French privateer named Gaspard in command of the squadron, which included Améthyste (renamed Heureuse Réunion), a corvette and a brig. Gaspard then armed Heureuse Réunion with 44 cannon, took on board a motley crew of over 600 men, a mixture of Haitians, Frenchmen, Americans and other nationalities, and began cruising in the Gulf of Gonâve. The British observational warship stationed off Haiti at this time was the frigate HMS Southampton under the command of Captain Sir James Lucas Yeo, who was under strict orders to respect the ships of Christophe and Pétion, but not those of the minor warlords that had emerged along the Haitian coast. On 2 January word reached him at Port au Prince of Gaspard's movements and he immediately sailed to intercept him, concerned that if Gaspard was allowed to take his squadron out of Haitian waters he might begin attacks on merchant ships regardless of nationality.

At 06:00 on 3 February, Yeo discovered Gaspard's ships at anchor to the south of Gonâve Island and demanded that Gaspard come aboard Southampton with his commissioning papers, to establish under whose authority Gaspard commanded the warship. Gaspard refused, but sent aboard his first lieutenant with a note purported to be from Borgella, signed "Borgellat, general in chief of the south of Hayti". As Borgella had no authority to commission warships, Yeo ordered the first lieutenant to tell Gaspard that his ships must submit to Southampton and be taken to Port Royal, Jamaica, where their ownership could be established by the British naval authorities there. He was given five minutes to consider the proposal.

A British officer accompanied the first lieutenant back to Heureuse Réunion for Gaspard's answer, and was informed within three minutes that Gaspard had no intention of submitting to the British. He was also told that should Yeo be intent on fighting Gaspard's ship, he should indicate it by firing his bow chasers ahead of Heureuse Réunion. Returning to Southampton at 06:30, the British officer relayed the message and the bow chasers were fired, followed a few seconds later by a full broadside from Southampton.

Heureuse Réunion responded to the cannonade in kind. During the engagement, Gaspard repeatedly attempted to board Southampton, where his vastly superior numbers could overwhelm the British. Yeo was aware of his enemy's intentions, and repeatedly manoeuvred out of the way, with the more agile Southampton easily able to remain out of contact with the overloaded Heureuse Réunion. Within half an hour the highly efficient gunners on Southampton had knocked down the mainmast and mizzenmast on Heureuse Réunion, leaving her unable to manoeuvre and vulnerable to repeated pounding at close range. Despite the severe damage the Haitian ship suffered, her crew continued to fire cannon at irregular intervals for 45 minutes, each shot prompting a broadside from Southampton. The two smaller vessels of Gaspard's squadron did not support him, fleeing towards Petit-Goâve to shelter under the batteries there. By 07:45, after over an hour of heavy fire, Yeo hailed Heureuse Réunion to discover whether or not she had surrendered. Somebody aboard replied that they had, although Gaspard had been seriously wounded and was no longer in command, so the identity of the person who gave the surrender is not known.

Aftermath

As Southampton stopped firing, the remaining masts of Heureuse Réunion fell overboard. Casualties on her were immense: of the 600–700 crew, 105 were dead and 120 wounded, the latter including Gaspard, who subsequently died of his injuries. Yeo's loss was one man killed and ten wounded, from a crew of 212. Seeking to rid himself of so many prisoners, Yeo landed most of them on the nearby shore before sailing to Port-au-Prince, where the rest were landed and temporary jury masts were fitted to Heureuse Réunion for her journey to Jamaica. The British retained twenty prisoners for trial at Port Royal. Heureuse Réunion was repaired at Jamaica and subsequently returned to Christophe. Yeo's action in attacking Gaspard and his squadron, although not officially sanctioned by his commanding officer beforehand, was commended.

The Caribbean rose in importance again later in 1812, with the outbreak of the War of 1812 between Britain and the United States. American privateers threatened British trade routes and Royal Navy ships were sent out to intercept them, including Southampton, which was wrecked in the Bahamas during an anti-privateer patrol in November 1812. There were no further significant actions in the region during the Napoleonic Wars, with the presence of Royal Navy patrols deterring any large scale French or American operations in the Caribbean.

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