Battle rages between the French warship Tonnant and HMS Majestic during The Battle of the Nile, fought on 1st-3rd August 1798. The British ship has lost her mizzen mast and her commander Captain George Blagdon Westcott has been shot and killed by French musketry. However, the damage is even worse aboard the Tonnant. Louis le Breton’s lithograph depicts the ship fully demasted, with men lying dead and dying on her deck. Nevertheless, the tattered French tricolour has been literally nailed to the mast, symbolising the ship’s continued resistance. On the steps to the poop deck, French officers and men attend to her mortally wounded captain, Commodore Aristide Aubert Du Petit Thouars. During the battle, cannon-fire had carried away the Commodore’s legs and one arm, but he continued to inspire his men to resist the British onslaught while propped up on a barrel of wheat until his eventual death. The ship herself would be the last of nine French vessels to surrender at Aboukir Bay. In spite of the fearful damage inflicted on her, Tonnant would be repaired in a British dockyard in time to join the ranks of her former enemy at Trafalgar, becoming one of the many captured French-built vessels to carry the Union Jack into battle during the Age of Sail.
The practise of re-commissioning captured warships has a long history. One of the earliest examples involving a French ship was Le Rubis. The newly completed 60-gun warship had inadvertently run into the British fleet during The Battle of Dungeness in September 1666, and surrendered after a short fight. As HMS French Ruby, she took part in several key battles of the Third Anglo-Dutch War (1673-74), including the First and Second Battles of Schooneveld, ironically as part of an Anglo-French fleet, being hulked in 1682.
This practice reached its zenith in the 18th and early 19th centuries as mercantile conflict grew between Britain, France and the older imperial powers. Naturally buoyant, large wooden warships, especially those designated ‘ships-of-the-line’, could take considerable punishment before sinking, even when holed below the waterline. In the Age of Sail, any serious damage to a ship’s masts and rigging usually rendered it immobile, thus making further resistance futile. Rather than subject their ships and crews to needless destruction, many less heroic captains chose to ‘strike their colours’ and surrender rather than nail them to the mast and fight to the last man.
Pressing captured warships into service against the enemy made sense from a number of perspectives. Repairing a battered ship-of-the-line reduced the need for timber, an increasingly scarce and costly resource in the 18th century. It was also much quicker to repair an existing vessel than build one from the keel up, which for a British line-of-battle-ship could take up to 10 years. This was an important consideration in an era when more British fighting ships were being lost through shipwreck than war. Re-commissioning a captured vessel arguably struck a small psychological blow against the enemy. Finally, captured ships were often desirable vessels. French warships were widely regarded as superior to their Royal Navy counterparts in certain aspects. There were muted advantages in speed, handling, gun arrangement, and crew comfort. This perceived superiority may have been largely apocryphal. Nevertheless, captured French warships undoubtedly influenced the design aspects of subsequent Royal Navy ones.
One of the most notable British captures of a French warship occurred at the First Battle of Cape Finisterre in May 1747. The Invincible, the first of an improved type of 74-gun two-decker, was among a dozen French ships captured after a one-sided battle to protect a merchant convoy from Admiral George Anson’s Channel Fleet. The influence this ship had on British design is illustrated by the fact that the 74-gun configuration subsequently became the backbone of the Royal Navy up to the time of Trafalgar. As HMS Invincible, the ship continued in British service until her grounding in the Solent in February 1758.
Another French ship captured during the War of the Austrian Succession was the Médée. Built at Brest in 1741 by master shipwright Blaise Ollivier, she was regarded as the prototype for the ‘frigate’. She carried a relatively powerful battery of 26 8-pounder guns on a continuous upper deck, which improved her fighting capabilities in rough seas. The Médée was captured in the English Channel by the 60-gun HMS Dreadnought in April 1744. Although she was discarded as structurally unsound soon after her commissioning as HMS Medea, the Navy Board took note of her innovative layout, which influenced all future frigate design for the Royal Navy.
More British captures of French warships took place during The Seven Years War. At The Battle of Cartagena in February 1858, the 80-gun third rate Foudroyant was taken. Re-commissioned as HMS Foudroyant, in April 1781, while under the command of Captain John Jervis – the future 1st Earl of St. Vincent – she would be responsible for capturing the 74-gun Pégase, another French prize which would also end up in British service. Three more French vessels were taken into British service after their capture at The Battle of Lagos in August 1759. The 64-gun Modeste and the two 74s Téméraire and Centaure also retained their Gallic names in the Royal Navy. HMS Modeste would have a hand in the capture the 32-gun frigate Bouffonne off Cadiz at the Action of 17 July 1761.
Not all captures of French warships occurred at sea. Some significant prizes were taken at Toulon in August 1793, during a royalist rebellion against republican rule. In charge of a British blockading fleet, Admiral Samuel Hood succeeded in luring three ships-of-the-line; Pompee, Puissant, and Commerce de Marseilles; six frigates, and eight smaller vessels over to the allied side, before a republican counter-attack led by Napoleon forced British forces to withdraw. Pompee was one of the French Navy’s 74-gun Téméraire Class, of which over 100 units were built between 1782 and 1813, and a fifth would become British prizes. As HMS Pompee, she would feature in a number of important actions during the Napoleonic era, including the capture of a sister-ship, Hautpoul, in April 1809.
Tonnant was the lead ship in a class of eight 80-gun ships-of-the-line constructed between 1787 and 1800. Tonnant was completed at Toulon in September 1790. Prior to her capture at the Nile, she’d participated in the Battle of Genoa, where she’d been badly damaged in a largely inconclusive action with an Anglo-Neapolitan fleet. At the Nile, she had been moored directly astern of L’Orient, and had been forced to cut her anchor cable before the burning flagship’s magazines exploded; the most singular event of the battle. After her capture, Tonnant and the other French prizes were sailed in a convoy with damaged British ships to Malta, Gibraltar, and then to the Portuguese coast. There they were laid up for some months in the Tagus until they could be safely escorted back to Plymouth. Tonnant eventually arrived in England on 17th July 1799, almost a year after the battle. After a period in ‘ordinary’, she underwent repairs and alterations to prepare her for Royal Navy service, a process that concluded in April 1803.
The reflagged HMS Tonnant took part in several minor naval actions during her first year at sea. Her second captain, William Henry Jervis, nephew of the illustrious John Jervis, had the misfortune to drown while being transferred in his gig to HMS San Josef in January 1805.[1] His replacement, Charles Tyler, led her into battle at Trafalgar placed fourth behind Admiral Collingwood’s flagship Royal Sovereign. She entered into a bloody close-range duel with the French 74 Algésiras, fending off an attempted boarding, but eventually prevailed having sustained 26 dead and 50 wounded.[2] She also exchanged fire with the Pluton and the old Spanish third-rater San Juan Nepomuceno.
No fewer than five of Tonnant’s sisters ended up as Royal Navy ships. San Pareil had been involved in the capture of a number of British merchant ships prior to her participation in ‘The Glorious First of June’, the first major sea battle of the Revolutionary War, where she was disabled at close quarters by HMS Royal George and HMS Glory, and captured by HMS Majestic. As HMS Sans Pareil, she performed good service for the Royal Navy until her withdrawal from fleet duties in 1802. Later, she served as a prison ship for French prisoners-of-war. Franklin, named in honour of the Franco-phile American statesman Benjamin Franklin, was another dogged participant and prize of the Nile. As HMS Canopus, she would fight throughout the Napoleonic era and remain in Royal Navy service for 89 years. Guillame Tell escaped destruction at Aboukir Bay, seeking refuge at Malta. She was captured there during a British assault on the island in 1800. As HMS Malta, she fought throughout the Napoleonic era, and remained in service until 1840. Alexandre, formerly named Indivisible, was captured in 1803 at the Battle of San Domingo, becoming HMS Alexander in British service. Formidable was part of the French vanguard at Trafalgar, which escaped after only minimal participation in the battle. She was among four units to surrender at the Battle of Cape Ortegal in November 1805, the battle that marked the end of the Franco-Spanish threat at sea, subsequently re-commissioning as HMS Brave.
Bow Creek to Anatahan 