Counter-Admiral Jacques Félix Emmanuel Hamelin (13 October 1768 – 23 April 1839) was a French Navy officer and explorer. He fought in numerous naval engagements during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars and conducted several exploratory voyages in the Indian Ocean and Southern Ocean.
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👉 Jacques Félix Emmanuel Hamelin in the context of Isle de France (Mauritius)
Isle de France (Modern French: Île de France, pronounced [il də fʁɑ̃s] ) was a French colony in the Indian Ocean from 1715 to 1810, comprising the island now known as Mauritius and its dependent territories. It was governed by the French East India Company and formed part of the French colonial empire. Under the French, the island witnessed major changes. The increasing importance of agriculture led to the "import" of slaves and the undertaking of vast infrastructural works that transformed the capital Port Louis into a major port, warehousing, and commercial centre.
During the Napoleonic Wars, Isle de France became a base from which the French navy, including squadrons under Rear Admiral Linois or Commodore Jacques Hamelin, and corsairs such as Robert Surcouf, organised raids on British merchant ships. The raids (see Battle of Pulo Aura and Mauritius campaign of 1809–1811) continued until 1810 when the British sent a strong expedition to capture the island. The first British attempt, in August 1810, to attack Grand Port resulted in a French victory, one celebrated on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. A subsequent and much larger attack launched in December of the same year from Rodrigues, which had been captured a year earlier, was successful. The British landed in large numbers in the north of the island and rapidly overpowered the French, who capitulated (see Invasion of Isle de France). In the Treaty of Paris (1814), the French ceded Isle de France together with its territories including Agaléga, the Cargados Carajos Shoals, the Chagos Archipelago, Rodrigues, Seychelles, and Tromelin Island to the United Kingdom. The island then reverted to its former name, 'Mauritius'.
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Jacques Félix Emmanuel Hamelin in the context of Mauritius campaign of 1809–1811
The Mauritius campaign of 1809–1811 was a minor military campaign of the Napoleonic Wars fought between British and French forces over France's Indian Ocean colonies of Isle de France and Isle Bonaparte. Lasting from the spring of 1809 to the spring of 1811, the campaign saw the British and French navies deploy substantial frigate squadrons to either protect or disrupt British-flagged shipping in the region. In a war in which the Royal Navy was almost universally dominant at sea, the campaign is especially notable for the local superiority enjoyed by the French Navy in autumn 1810 following their victory at the Battle of Grand Port, the British navy's most significant defeat in the entire conflict.
British commanders had been planning an operation against Isle de France since occupying the Dutch Cape Colony in 1806 and destroying the Dutch squadron in Java in 1807, but acted earlier than planned following the arrival from France of a powerful frigate squadron under Commodore Jacques Félix Emmanuel Hamelin in late 1808. Hamelin's squadron captured several British East Indiamen and disrupted Britain's trade routes across the Indian Ocean by raiding the convoys in which its merchantmen travelled. Forced to confront this threat, Admiral Albemarle Bertie at the Cape Colony ordered Commodore Josias Rowley to blockade the French colonies and prevent their use use as raiding bases.