HMS Guerriere
 The USS Constitution defeats the HMS Guerrière |
|
| Overview | |
|---|---|
| Type | Sailing frigate |
| Shipyard |
Cherbourg |
| Keel laying | 1798 |
| Launch | 1799 |
| 1. Period of service |
|
| Commissioning | 1806 (for Royal Navy) |
| Whereabouts | Burned after being defeated by the USS Constitution on August 19, 1812 |
| Technical specifications | |
| displacement |
1,092 t |
| crew |
284 ( but only 244 men and 19 boys in the battle against Constitution ) |
| Armament |
30 × 18 pounder cannons |
The HMS Guerriere ( French for female warrior ) was a French frigate built in 1799 that was captured by the Royal Navy in 1806 . Through her battle and her defeat against the American frigate USS Constitution in the war of 1812 , she gained notoriety beyond the United Kingdom and the USA .
Under the French flag
During the Napoleonic Wars , the Guerrière was attacked on July 24, 1803 together with the 74-gun ship of the line Duguay-Trouin by the HMS Elephant (also 74 guns) and the sloop HMS Snake near Cape Picolet. However, the British did not succeed in getting the two French ships involved in a permanent battle and so they finally had to let them go. On September 2 of the same year, Guerrière and Duguay-Trouin were discovered again by a British squadron under the command of Commodore Sir Edward Pellew . The HMS Culloden immediately took up the chase and was able to severely damage the Guerrière before it reached the allied port of A Coruña . Although the bastions of Coruña had already opened fire on the Culloden , the British only broke off the attack shortly before the port entrance.
On March 28, 1806, the Guerrière between Greenland and the Arctic began a campaign against British and Russian whalers together with the frigates Revanche and Syrène and the brig-corvette Néarqu . Although it was separated from the rest of the fleet, it was able to capture and destroy several whaling ships.
Battle against HMS Blanche
On July 16, information about their activities and their sighting near the Faroe Islands reached Captain Thomas Lavie from HMS Blanche . This immediately set sail and intercepted the Guerrière two days later in the Faroe Islands. At this time the French ship was carrying 50 guns, the Blanche 46. However, the British were able to compensate for this disadvantage with their more efficient piece crews. They opened the battle 15 minutes after midnight and fired two broadsides at the Guerrière before it could return fire. An intense duel followed, in which the Blanche turned out to be superior due to the better British seamanship. When the hull and rigging of the Guerrière were already badly damaged, the French tried with targeted shots to at least partially de-mast the Blanche in order to escape the British. When this failed, they finally had to surrender to the British ship.
As HMS Guerriere
On July 26th, the Guerrière reached the United Kingdom as a British prize . Between August 1, 1806 and January 2, 1808, the ship was repaired and equipped in the Chatham shipyard . On February 11, 1808, the ship set sail as HMS Guerriere under the command of Captain Alexander Skene with the destination Jamaica . On the way she took the French privateer Malvina and the Juliana , which had previously been captured by the French brig. In July 1808 she came to the aid of an American convoy , as it was threatened by the French privateer Peraty . The Guerriere captured the Peraty on July 17th after a 24-hour hunt.
From October 1810 the Guerriere was stationed in Halifax , where James Richard Dacres took over command in March 1811. On May 1, 1811, the Guerriere stopped an American brig and kidnapped one of its sailors. Although the so-called "impressions", i.e. the drawing in of crews against their will, had often been carried out by the British against US ships since the beginning of the war against Napoléon Bonaparte , this incident further exacerbated the already extremely tense relations between the United States Kingdom and USA. As a result of this attack, there was a little later to a battle between the USS President and the far inferior HMS Little Belt , in which the British ship was badly damaged.
The war of 1812
On June 18, 1812, the United States declared war on Britain. On July 17, the Guerriere encountered the 44-gun frigate USS Constitution (54 guns) as part of a British squadron off Egg Harbor . The American ship had previously falsely identified the enemy ships as allies and was now trying desperately to escape the British. Since the ships were in a doldrums , the Americans put boats out to tow their ship out of range of the British cannons. The British imitated this maneuver. With the help of warpankers , the Americans finally managed to escape their pursuers after about 60 hours of hunting.
Naval battle against the USS Constitution
The Guerriere was separated from the squadron and met again on August 19 on the USS Constitution . The British captain Dacres took the initiative and opened the battle. His American opposite Isaac Hull speculated correctly on a Kaperversuch the British and answered the volleys of Guerriere not initially. In addition, the British did not succeed in breaking through the hull walls of the Constitution with their 18 pounder cannons , a circumstance that should earn the US Navy ship the nickname "Old Ironsides".
When the Guerriere had approached to about 25 meters, the Constitution fired a combined broadside, consisting of its heavy 24-pounder projectiles, and cluster munitions. The British ship was badly damaged and a significant part of its crew either killed or wounded. When visibility also deteriorated due to smoke caused by the battle, there was an additional collision between the two ships. The bowsprit and rigging of the guerriere were particularly badly affected, while the damage to the constitution was comparatively minor. From now on, the constitution also had an advantage in terms of maneuverability and was able to dismast the guerriere within 20 minutes.
Captain Dacres now found himself in the most unusual situation for British captains of waving the flag in front of an enemy ship. It was the first time in nearly ten years that the British had lost one of their frigates in a one-on-one battle. Since the Guerriere was too badly damaged to be brought into a port as a prize, it was burned by the Americans on the open sea. This loss came as a shock to the UK, and the Constitution crew members were celebrated in the US.
On October 2nd, Captain Dacres was acquitted of any responsibility for the defeat by a court martial aboard HMS Africa .
literature
- Robert Gardiner (Ed.): The Naval War of 1812 . US Naval Institute Press, Annapolis 1998, ISBN 978-1-55750-654-2 (American English).
- Karl Heinz Marquardt: Anatomy of the Ship. The 44-Gun Frigate USS Constitution "Old Ironsides" . US Naval Institute Press, Annapolis 2005, ISBN 978-1-59114-250-8 (American English).
- Tyrone G. Martin: A most fortunate ship: A narrative History of Old Ironsides . Revised Edition. US Naval Institute Press, Annapolis 2003, ISBN 978-1-59114-513-4 (American English).
- Ian W. Toll: Six Frigates. The Epic History Of The Founding Of The US Navy . WW Norton & Co., New York 2006, ISBN 978-0-393-05847-5 (American English).
- Rif Winfield: British Warships in the Age of Sail 1793-1817 . Chatham Publishing, London 2005, ISBN 978-1-86176-246-7 (English).
- British Public Record Office, Admiralty 1/502, Part 4, 541-45.
