Battle of Diamond Rock
Encyclopedia
The Battle of Diamond Rock took place between 31 May and 2 June 1805 during the Napoleonic Wars
. It was an attempt by Franco-Spanish force despatched under Captain Julien Cosmao
to retake Diamond Rock
, at the entrance to the bay leading to Fort-de-France
, from the British forces that had occupied it over a year before.
The French in Martinique had been unable to oust the defenders from the strategically important rock, and the British garrison was able to control access to Fort de France bay, firing on ships attempting to enter it with guns they had placed on the cliffs. The arrival of a large combined Franco-Spanish fleet in May changed the strategic situation. The French commander, Pierre de Villeneuve
had orders to attack British possessions in the Caribbean, but instead waited at Martinique for clearer instructions. He was finally persuaded to authorise an assault on the British position, and a Franco-Spanish flotilla
was despatched to storm the rock. Already short of water, the defenders held on in the summit for several days, while the French, who had forgotten to bring scaling ladders, could make little headway.
The British, short of both water and ammunition, eventually negotiated the surrender of the rock after several days under fire. The British commander was subsequently tried by court martial for loss of his 'ship' after repatriation, and honourably acquitted.
s issuing out of the two major naval bases the French retained in the Caribbean, at Guadeloupe
and Martinique
. The privateers had captured a number of valuable cargoes and were diverting British warships to protect the merchant fleets. Hood decided to blockade Martinique, and thus curtail the privateers and intercept supplies destined for the French garrison. Patrolling off the bay at the southern end of the island, in which one of Martinique's two main ports, Fort-de-France, was located, Hood saw that if Diamond Rock could be occupied, it would allow the British to effectively control the shipping approaching the ports on the western side, as the currents around the island made the easiest approaches mean passing within sight of Diamond Rock.
Hood reconnoitered Diamond Rock and considered it excellently defensible, with the only possible landing site being on the western side. He wrote that 'thirty riflemen will keep the hill against ten thousand ... it is a perfect naval post.' A party of men were landed on 7 January 1804, from Hood's flagship , under the command of Centaurs first lieutenant James Wilkes Maurice
. They promptly fortified the small cove they had landed at with their launch's
24 pounder, and established forges and artificers' workshops in a cave at the base of the rock. After fixing ladders and ropes to scale the sheer sides of the rock, they were able to access the summit and began to establish messes and sleeping areas in a number of small caves. Bats were driven out by burning bales of hay, and a space was cleared by blasting at the top of the rock in order to establish a battery. In February a number of guns were transferred over from Centaur, with two 24 pounders being installed in a cave near sea level, another 24 pounder halfway up the rock, and two 18 pounders in the battery at the top. In addition to this the men had use of a number of boats, with one armed with a 24 pounder carronade
, which were used to intercept enemy ships.
Marshall's Naval Biography, when describing the process of hauling the guns to the summit, recorded that
ordered work to begin on building a road to the coast opposite the rock, and the establishment of a battery there, but the British were forewarned by the black population of the island who were largely sympathetic to the British. A party was sent onshore, which succeeded in capturing the engineer sent to construct the battery, and three of his men. Work on the battery was abandoned after further British raids on the area.
, announcing that he had commissioned the rock as a sloop
, under the name Fort Diamond. Lieutenant Maurice, who had impressed Hood with his efforts while establishing the position, was rewarded by being made commander. Diamond Rock was to be considered a captured enemy ship, and was technically treated as a tender to one of the boats stationed there, commissioned by the Admiralty as the sloop Diamond Rock
, superseding Hood's use of Fort Diamond. This was a mere technicality, and when the boat fell into French hands, another replaced it, and in time the rock became known as the 'Sloop Diamond Rock'. The batteries were also named, the two 18 pounders at the summit were known as 'Fort Diamond' or 'Diamond Battery', while the 24 pounder half way up was known as 'Hood's Battery'.
, a poisonous snake inhabiting the rock.
On 14 May 1805 a large French fleet arrived in Fort de France Bay, having briefly exchanged fire with the British on Diamond Rock as they did so. The fleet, under Pierre de Villeneuve, was joined over the next few days by Spanish ships under Federico Gravina. As the Spanish ship San Rafael approached on 16 May, the British hoisted the French flag, luring the Spanish ship to pass close by. As she did so the British forces replaced the French colours with the British, and opened fire, taking the Spanish by surprise. Shortly after this it was discovered that the main cistern, holding a month's supply of water, had cracked in some earth tremors, and the leak had been made worse by the vibration from the guns. There was barely two weeks left, but fresh supplies were now unobtainable as a blockade of the rock began by a number of schooners, brigs and frigates.
The combined fleet carried a large number of soldiers, intended by Napoleon
to be used to attack British possession in the Caribbean. Villeneuve felt however that his orders were not clear, and remained at Fort de France, hoping to be joined by a fleet under Honoré Ganteaume
, which unbeknownst to him had been unable to break the blockade of Brest
. For two weeks Villeneuve lingered in the bay, until finally being persuaded by Villaret de Joyeuse to use his forces to capture Diamond Rock, a thorn in his side for the past seventeen months. Villeneuve gave Captain Julien Cosmao
of the 74-gun Pluton
command of the expedition. He was to take his ship, the 74-gun Berwick
, the 36-gun Sirène
, a corvette
, schooner
, eleven gunboat
s, and between three and four hundred men, and retake the rock.
At four o'clock that afternoon flag of truce was displayed and a senior French officer was despatched in a schooner to offer terms. By 5 Maurice had agreed to surrender Diamond Rock, the officers were to retain their swords and the men would remain under their orders. They were to be taken to Fort de France, and from there repatriated to a British settlement at the first opportunity. With these terms agreed, the British surrendered Diamond Rock. The British had two men killed and one man wounded in the battle. French casualties were harder to judge, Maurice estimated they amounted to seventy, the French commander of the landing force made a 'hasty calculation' of fifty. In addition to this the British had sunk five large boats, and potentially inflicted further casualties during the bombardment of the French warships. Maurice and his men were taken off the rock on the morning of 6 June and put on board the Pluton and Berwick.
by 6 June, and sent a letter, dated that day to Horatio Nelson, who had recently arrived in the Caribbean in search of Villeneuve's fleet.
Naval procedure at the time was that all commanders who lost their ships automatically faced a court martial. Accordingly, Maurice was tried by a court martial convened aboard the 28-gun in Carlisle Bay on 24 June. Maurice was honourably acquitted for the loss, the verdict noting
Villeneuve had retaken the rock, but the day the attack began the frigate Didon had arrived with orders from Napoleon. Villeneuve was ordered to take his force and attack British possessions, before returning in force to Europe, hopefully having in the meantime been joined by Ganteaume's fleet. but by now his supplies were so low that he could attempt little more than harassing some of the smaller British islands. Anti-French feelings grew by the Spanish commander Don Federico Gravina after the capture of the Diamond Rock. Gravina wanted to invade the island of Trinidad
as the British captured it from the Spanish a couple of years before. Villeneuve left Fort de France on 5 June, and on 7 June two French frigates sighted a convoy of 16 British merchants, and Villeneuve signaled general chase. The Spanish 80 gun ship of the line Argonauta and the two frigates chased down and captured 15 of the 16 merchants. The convoy was laden with sugar, rum, coffee, cotton and other products. From them he learnt that Nelson had arrived in the West Indies, in hot pursuit of Villeneuve. Shocked, Villeneuve abandoned his plans to raid the British colonies and immediately began preparations for the return voyage. The fleet got underway on 11 June, causing one of the army officers attached to the fleet, General Honoré Charles Reille
to note
in 1809.
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...
. It was an attempt by Franco-Spanish force despatched under Captain Julien Cosmao
Julien Cosmao
Julien Marie Cosmao-Kerjulien was a French Navy officer, admiral, and hero of the Battle of Trafalgar.- Early career :...
to retake Diamond Rock
Diamond Rock
Diamond Rock is a 175 meter high basalt island located south of Fort-de-France, the main port of the Caribbean island of Martinique. The uninhabited island is about three kilometers from Pointe Diamant. The island gets its name from the reflections that its sides cast at certain hours of the day,...
, at the entrance to the bay leading to Fort-de-France
Fort-de-France
Fort-de-France is the capital of France's Caribbean overseas department of Martinique. It is also one of the major cities in the Caribbean. Exports include sugar, rum, tinned fruit, and cacao.-Geography:...
, from the British forces that had occupied it over a year before.
The French in Martinique had been unable to oust the defenders from the strategically important rock, and the British garrison was able to control access to Fort de France bay, firing on ships attempting to enter it with guns they had placed on the cliffs. The arrival of a large combined Franco-Spanish fleet in May changed the strategic situation. The French commander, Pierre de Villeneuve
Pierre-Charles Villeneuve
Pierre-Charles-Jean-Baptiste-Silvestre de Villeneuve was a French naval officer during the Napoleonic Wars. He was in command of the French and Spanish fleets defeated by Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar....
had orders to attack British possessions in the Caribbean, but instead waited at Martinique for clearer instructions. He was finally persuaded to authorise an assault on the British position, and a Franco-Spanish flotilla
Flotilla
A flotilla , or naval flotilla, is a formation of small warships that may be part of a larger fleet. A flotilla is usually composed of a homogeneous group of the same class of warship, such as frigates, destroyers, torpedo boats, submarines, gunboats, or minesweepers...
was despatched to storm the rock. Already short of water, the defenders held on in the summit for several days, while the French, who had forgotten to bring scaling ladders, could make little headway.
The British, short of both water and ammunition, eventually negotiated the surrender of the rock after several days under fire. The British commander was subsequently tried by court martial for loss of his 'ship' after repatriation, and honourably acquitted.
Diamond Rock is fortified
Diamond Rock had been fortified in January 1804 on the orders of Commodore Samuel Hood. Hood had been active in the West Indies, protecting British convoys from French privateerPrivateer
A privateer is a private person or ship authorized by a government by letters of marque to attack foreign shipping during wartime. Privateering was a way of mobilizing armed ships and sailors without having to spend public money or commit naval officers...
s issuing out of the two major naval bases the French retained in the Caribbean, at Guadeloupe
Guadeloupe
Guadeloupe is an archipelago located in the Leeward Islands, in the Lesser Antilles, with a land area of 1,628 square kilometres and a population of 400,000. It is the first overseas region of France, consisting of a single overseas department. As with the other overseas departments, Guadeloupe...
and Martinique
Martinique
Martinique is an island in the eastern Caribbean Sea, with a land area of . Like Guadeloupe, it is an overseas region of France, consisting of a single overseas department. To the northwest lies Dominica, to the south St Lucia, and to the southeast Barbados...
. The privateers had captured a number of valuable cargoes and were diverting British warships to protect the merchant fleets. Hood decided to blockade Martinique, and thus curtail the privateers and intercept supplies destined for the French garrison. Patrolling off the bay at the southern end of the island, in which one of Martinique's two main ports, Fort-de-France, was located, Hood saw that if Diamond Rock could be occupied, it would allow the British to effectively control the shipping approaching the ports on the western side, as the currents around the island made the easiest approaches mean passing within sight of Diamond Rock.
Hood reconnoitered Diamond Rock and considered it excellently defensible, with the only possible landing site being on the western side. He wrote that 'thirty riflemen will keep the hill against ten thousand ... it is a perfect naval post.' A party of men were landed on 7 January 1804, from Hood's flagship , under the command of Centaurs first lieutenant James Wilkes Maurice
James Wilkes Maurice
Vice-Admiral James Wilkes Maurice was an officer of the Royal Navy during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars...
. They promptly fortified the small cove they had landed at with their launch's
Launch (boat)
A launch in contemporary usage refers to a large motorboat. The name originally referred to the largest boat carried by a warship. The etymology of the word is given as Portuguese lancha "barge", from Malay lancha, lancharan, "boat," from lanchar "velocity without effort," "action of gliding...
24 pounder, and established forges and artificers' workshops in a cave at the base of the rock. After fixing ladders and ropes to scale the sheer sides of the rock, they were able to access the summit and began to establish messes and sleeping areas in a number of small caves. Bats were driven out by burning bales of hay, and a space was cleared by blasting at the top of the rock in order to establish a battery. In February a number of guns were transferred over from Centaur, with two 24 pounders being installed in a cave near sea level, another 24 pounder halfway up the rock, and two 18 pounders in the battery at the top. In addition to this the men had use of a number of boats, with one armed with a 24 pounder carronade
Carronade
The carronade was a short smoothbore, cast iron cannon, developed for the Royal Navy by the Carron Company, an ironworks in Falkirk, Scotland, UK. It was used from the 1770s to the 1850s. Its main function was to serve as a powerful, short-range anti-ship and anti-crew weapon...
, which were used to intercept enemy ships.
Marshall's Naval Biography, when describing the process of hauling the guns to the summit, recorded that
French reactions
Despite the vulnerability of both Centaur and the Rock to a French gunboat attack while the process of fortification was being carried out, the French neglected to act. The governor of Martinique, Louis Thomas Villaret de JoyeuseLouis Thomas Villaret de Joyeuse
Louis Thomas Villaret de Joyeuse was a French admiral.-Early career:Louis Thomas Villaret de Joyeuse was born in Auch, in the heart of Gascony. The Villaret de Joyeuse family figured among the minor nobility from Languedoc...
ordered work to begin on building a road to the coast opposite the rock, and the establishment of a battery there, but the British were forewarned by the black population of the island who were largely sympathetic to the British. A party was sent onshore, which succeeded in capturing the engineer sent to construct the battery, and three of his men. Work on the battery was abandoned after further British raids on the area.
HM Fort Diamond
By early February the guns had been installed and tested. The 18 pounders were able to completely command the passage between the rock and the island, forcing ships to avoid the channel. The winds and currents meant that these ships were then unable to enter the bay. With work complete by 7 February Hood decided to formalise the administration of the island, and wrote to the AdmiraltyAdmiralty
The Admiralty was formerly the authority in the Kingdom of England, and later in the United Kingdom, responsible for the command of the Royal Navy...
, announcing that he had commissioned the rock as a sloop
Sloop-of-war
In the 18th and most of the 19th centuries, a sloop-of-war was a warship with a single gun deck that carried up to eighteen guns. As the rating system covered all vessels with 20 guns and above, this meant that the term sloop-of-war actually encompassed all the unrated combat vessels including the...
, under the name Fort Diamond. Lieutenant Maurice, who had impressed Hood with his efforts while establishing the position, was rewarded by being made commander. Diamond Rock was to be considered a captured enemy ship, and was technically treated as a tender to one of the boats stationed there, commissioned by the Admiralty as the sloop Diamond Rock
HMS Fort Diamond
HMS Fort Diamond was a six-gun sloop , commissioned in 1804 in Martinique. Her origins are unknown. She captured one French privateer before she herself was lost to a French boarding party in June 1804.-Career:...
, superseding Hood's use of Fort Diamond. This was a mere technicality, and when the boat fell into French hands, another replaced it, and in time the rock became known as the 'Sloop Diamond Rock'. The batteries were also named, the two 18 pounders at the summit were known as 'Fort Diamond' or 'Diamond Battery', while the 24 pounder half way up was known as 'Hood's Battery'.
Life on the Rock
Maurice had a party of around 100 men under his command on the rock, with the usual officers found on a British warship, including a surgeon, purser, and a junior lieutenant to command the small supply vessel. A hospital was established, and food, gunpowder and ammunition were brought to the rock in boats, at first from Centaur, and then from Martinique, where it was purchased from sympathetic inhabitants. Water also had to be brought from the island, and large cisterns were built to store it. The men on the rock also ran the risk of falling from the heights or being bitten by the fer-de-lanceBothrops lanceolatus
Bothrops lanceolatus is a venomous pitviper species generally considered endemic to the island of Martinique. No one has satisfactorily explained why it has flourished there and is unknown on nearly all other Caribbean islands. Some reserve the name fer-de-lance for this species, while others apply...
, a poisonous snake inhabiting the rock.
First French assault
With the British presence on Diamond Rock firmly established, Hood departed with Centaur, and the French saw an opportunity to attack. Four boatloads of soldiers were despatched at night, though the sailors who rowed there were extremely pessimistic as to their chances. Exhausted by the time they arrived at the rock, the men were not able to resist the pull of the strong current and were swept out to sea. They were eventually able to make it back to Martinique, with the British only learning of the attempt several days later. They could have easily have sunk the French boats had they made a daylight assault, and disheartened by this failure, no further attempts were made to attack the fort from the island. Maurice and his men devoted their time after this to raiding and cutting out ships from the Martinique coast, and interdicting trade.Villeneuve arrives
The combined fleet carried a large number of soldiers, intended by Napoleon
Napoleon I of France
Napoleon Bonaparte was a French military and political leader during the latter stages of the French Revolution.As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1815...
to be used to attack British possession in the Caribbean. Villeneuve felt however that his orders were not clear, and remained at Fort de France, hoping to be joined by a fleet under Honoré Ganteaume
Honoré Joseph Antoine Ganteaume
Count Honoré Joseph Antoine Ganteaume was a French admiral.Ganteaume was born to a family of merchant sailors, and sailed on a dozen commercial cruises in his youth...
, which unbeknownst to him had been unable to break the blockade of Brest
Brest, France
Brest is a city in the Finistère department in Brittany in northwestern France. Located in a sheltered position not far from the western tip of the Breton peninsula, and the western extremity of metropolitan France, Brest is an important harbour and the second French military port after Toulon...
. For two weeks Villeneuve lingered in the bay, until finally being persuaded by Villaret de Joyeuse to use his forces to capture Diamond Rock, a thorn in his side for the past seventeen months. Villeneuve gave Captain Julien Cosmao
Julien Cosmao
Julien Marie Cosmao-Kerjulien was a French Navy officer, admiral, and hero of the Battle of Trafalgar.- Early career :...
of the 74-gun Pluton
French ship Pluton (1804)
Pluton was a 74-gun French ship of the line built at Toulon.It took part in the Battle of Trafalgar under Captain Julien Cosmao escaped to Cádiz with other ships. Two days later, on 23 October 1805, she was the flagship of the counter-attack from Cádiz, together with Indomptable, Neptune, Rayo, and...
command of the expedition. He was to take his ship, the 74-gun Berwick
HMS Berwick (1775)
HMS Berwick was a 74-gun Elizabeth-class third rate of the Royal Navy, launched at Portsmouth Dockyard on 18 April 1775, to a design by Sir Thomas Slade. She fought the French at the Battle of Ushant and the Dutch at the Battle of Dogger Bank...
, the 36-gun Sirène
French frigate Sirène (1795)
The Sirène was a 40-gun Coquille class frigate of the French Navy.Begun as Fidèle, she was commissioned as Sirène in May 1795 under lieutenant Charles Berrenger. She took part in the Expédition d'Irlande....
, a corvette
Corvette
A corvette is a small, maneuverable, lightly armed warship, originally smaller than a frigate and larger than a coastal patrol craft or fast attack craft , although many recent designs resemble frigates in size and role...
, schooner
Schooner
A schooner is a type of sailing vessel characterized by the use of fore-and-aft sails on two or more masts with the forward mast being no taller than the rear masts....
, eleven gunboat
Gunboat
A gunboat is a naval watercraft designed for the express purpose of carrying one or more guns to bombard coastal targets, as opposed to those military craft designed for naval warfare, or for ferrying troops or supplies.-History:...
s, and between three and four hundred men, and retake the rock.
Battle
The flotilla left their anchorage on 29 May, but were not able to work into a position to attack windward of the rock until 31 May. Lieutenant Maurice assessed the overwhelming strength of the French, and having decided that it would be impossible to hold the lower stages, spiked the guns covering the landing stage, scuttled the launch, and withdrew his forces to defend the upper levels. Four Spanish gunboats from the ships San Rafael, Argonauta, España and Firme participated in the attack, with a Spanish gunboat being the first to disembark troops on the rock under fire from the British positions. Cosmao began an intense bombardment while the infantry forced their way onto the landing stage, losing three gunboats and two rowing boats full of soldiers as they did so. The attacking force had however neglected to bring any scaling ladders, and could not assault the sheer rock sides. Instead they were forced to besiege the British forces in the upper levels. By 2 June, with his ammunition almost exhausted and water supplies running critically short, Maurice opened negotiations.At four o'clock that afternoon flag of truce was displayed and a senior French officer was despatched in a schooner to offer terms. By 5 Maurice had agreed to surrender Diamond Rock, the officers were to retain their swords and the men would remain under their orders. They were to be taken to Fort de France, and from there repatriated to a British settlement at the first opportunity. With these terms agreed, the British surrendered Diamond Rock. The British had two men killed and one man wounded in the battle. French casualties were harder to judge, Maurice estimated they amounted to seventy, the French commander of the landing force made a 'hasty calculation' of fifty. In addition to this the British had sunk five large boats, and potentially inflicted further casualties during the bombardment of the French warships. Maurice and his men were taken off the rock on the morning of 6 June and put on board the Pluton and Berwick.
Aftermath
Maurice was returned to BarbadosBarbados
Barbados is an island country in the Lesser Antilles. It is in length and as much as in width, amounting to . It is situated in the western area of the North Atlantic and 100 kilometres east of the Windward Islands and the Caribbean Sea; therein, it is about east of the islands of Saint...
by 6 June, and sent a letter, dated that day to Horatio Nelson, who had recently arrived in the Caribbean in search of Villeneuve's fleet.
Naval procedure at the time was that all commanders who lost their ships automatically faced a court martial. Accordingly, Maurice was tried by a court martial convened aboard the 28-gun in Carlisle Bay on 24 June. Maurice was honourably acquitted for the loss, the verdict noting
Villeneuve had retaken the rock, but the day the attack began the frigate Didon had arrived with orders from Napoleon. Villeneuve was ordered to take his force and attack British possessions, before returning in force to Europe, hopefully having in the meantime been joined by Ganteaume's fleet. but by now his supplies were so low that he could attempt little more than harassing some of the smaller British islands. Anti-French feelings grew by the Spanish commander Don Federico Gravina after the capture of the Diamond Rock. Gravina wanted to invade the island of Trinidad
History of Trinidad and Tobago
The history of Trinidad begins with the settlements of the islands by Amerindians. Both islands were explored by Christopher Columbus on his third voyage in 1498. Tobago changed hands between the British, French, Dutch and Courlanders, but eventually ended up in British hands. Trinidad remained in...
as the British captured it from the Spanish a couple of years before. Villeneuve left Fort de France on 5 June, and on 7 June two French frigates sighted a convoy of 16 British merchants, and Villeneuve signaled general chase. The Spanish 80 gun ship of the line Argonauta and the two frigates chased down and captured 15 of the 16 merchants. The convoy was laden with sugar, rum, coffee, cotton and other products. From them he learnt that Nelson had arrived in the West Indies, in hot pursuit of Villeneuve. Shocked, Villeneuve abandoned his plans to raid the British colonies and immediately began preparations for the return voyage. The fleet got underway on 11 June, causing one of the army officers attached to the fleet, General Honoré Charles Reille
Honoré Charles Reille
Honoré Charles Michel Joseph Reille was a Marshal of France, born in Antibes.Reille served in the early campaigns of the French Revolutionary Wars under Dumouriez and Masséna, whose daughter Victoire he married. In 1800, Reille was appointed commander of the Italian city of Florence...
to note
We have been masters of the sea for three weeks with a landing force of 7000 to 8000 men and have not been able to attack a single island.The capture of Diamond Rock and the seizing of 15 merchant ships were the only successes that the combined fleet had during their Caribbean campaign. The rock remained in French hands until the capture of Martinique
Invasion of Martinique (1809)
The invasion of Martinique of 1809 was a successful British amphibious operation against the French West Indian island of Martinique that took place between 30 January and 24 February 1809 during the Napoleonic Wars...
in 1809.