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The Battle of Tamatave (sometimes called the Battle of Madagascar or the Action of 20 May 1811) was fought off Tamatave in Madagascar between British and French frigate squadrons during the Napoleonic Wars. The action was the final engagement of the Mauritius campaign of 1809–1811, and it saw the destruction of the last French attempt to reinforce their garrison on Mauritius. Although the news had not reached Europe by February 1811 when the reinforcement squadron left Brest, Mauritius had been captured in December 1810 by a British invasion fleet, the French defences hampered by the lack of the supplies and troops carried aboard the frigate squadron under the command of Commodore François Roquebert in ''Renommée''. Roquebert's heavily laden ships reached Mauritius on 6 May and discovered that the island was in British hands the following day, narrowly escaping a trap laid by a squadron of British frigates ordered to hunt and destroy them. On 20 May the British squadron, under the command of Captain Charles Marsh Schomberg, discovered the French off Tamatave and attacked, both sides hampered by light winds which impeded movement for much of the day. During a period of calm weather early in the battle, the French were better positioned than the disorganised British squadron and Roquebert's ships inflicted severe damage on several British vessels before an increasing breeze allowed Schomberg to press home his attack. As the evening approached, the French attempted to escape, Roquebert sacrificing his flagship and ultimately his life to allow the frigates ''Clorinde'' and the badly damaged ''Néréide'' to escape. Five days later, Schomberg's squadron rediscovered ''Néréide'' at Tamatave and persuaded the town's commander to surrender without a fight. The battle was the last action of the Mauritius campaign and confirmed British dominance of the seas east of the Cape of Good Hope for the rest of the Napoleonic Wars. ==Background== In August 1810, the French squadron on Isle de France (now Mauritius) achieved the most significant French naval victory of the Napoleonic Wars, when they captured or destroyed four Royal Navy frigates at the Battle of Grand Port. The battle was fought inside Grand Port, one of the harbours of Isle de France into which the French squadrons, dominant in the Indian Ocean during 1809, had been steadily pushed and blockaded by pressure from a British squadron under Commodore Josias Rowley.〔Gardiner, p. 95〕 The British defeat had a noticeable galvanising effect on both the British and French naval commands: both recognised that the campaign would be won by the first to reinforce and resupply their forces. Although the French had achieved a significant victory, the naval bases on Isle de France lacked the military stores and food supplies to repair the battle damage to their ships or supply lengthy raiding voyages against British trade routes.〔Woodman, p. 284〕 The British reaction was immediate: ships were dispatched from regional bases at Madras, the Cape of Good Hope and Rodriguez to replace Rowley's losses while a larger force was collected at Rodriguez in preparation for a major invasion of Isle de France intended to permanently eliminate the island as a raiding base. The French response from their squadron on Isle de France, based at Port Napoleon under Commodore Jacques Hamelin, was to exercise their regional superiority by attacking British reinforcements at the actions of 13 September 1810 and 18 September 1810. Despite inflicting severe damage on two British frigates, the French lost one of their own, captured with Hamelin aboard, and suffered two more damaged. Without supplies or reinforcements to replace these losses, the French were unable to resist the British invasion in November 1810 and the island fell within four days.〔Taylor, p. 331〕 The French had also been preparing reinforcements for the region, but their nearest naval bases were in France itself, several thousand miles away across oceans almost totally controlled by the Royal Navy. These distances also delayed the arrival of news from the Indian Ocean, and therefore word had still not reached France of the fall of Isle de France by 17:00 on 2 February 1811, when a reinforcement squadron set sail from Brest.〔Clowes, p. 486〕 This squadron consisted of three powerful frigates, ''Renommée'' under Commodore François Roquebert, ''Clorinde'' under Captain Jacques Saint-Cricq and ''Néréide'' under Captain Jean-François Lemaresquier. Each ship carried over 200 soldiers for the Isle de France garrison and significant food and military supplies with which to refit Hamelin's squadron and resupply the island. The French authorities were aware of the possibility that Isle de France had been captured, and had ordered that if the island was in British hands, the squadron should continue on to the Dutch city of Batavia on Java, to operate against the British from there.〔James, p. 15〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Battle of Tamatave」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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