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The Raid on Griessie was a British attack on the Dutch port of Griessie (later renamed Gresik) on Java in the Dutch East Indies in December 1807 during the Napoleonic Wars. The raid was the final action in a series of engagements fought by the British squadron based in the Indian Ocean against the Dutch naval forces in Java, and it completed the destruction of the Dutch squadron with the scuttling of two old ships of the line, the last Dutch warships in the region. The British squadron—under the command of Rear-Admiral Sir Edward Pellew—sought to eliminate the Dutch in an effort to safeguard the trade route with China, which ran through the Straits of Malacca and were in range of Dutch raiders operating from the principal Javan port of Batavia. In the summer of 1806, British frigates reconnoitred Javan waters and captured two Dutch frigates, encouraging Pellew to lead a major attack on Batavia that destroyed the last Dutch frigate and several smaller warships. Prior to the Batavia raid however, Dutch Rear-Admiral Hartsinck had ordered his ships of the line to sail eastwards, where they took shelter at Griessie, near Sourabaya. On the morning of 5 December 1807, a second raiding squadron under Pellew appeared off Griessie and demanded that the Dutch squadron in the harbour surrender. The Dutch commander—Captain Cowell—refused, and seized the boat party that had carried the message. Pellew responded by advancing up the river and exchanging fire with a Dutch gun battery on Madura Island, at which point the governor in Surabaya overruled Captain Cowell, released the seized boat party and agreed to surrender the ships at anchor in Gresik harbour. By the time Pellew reached the anchorage, however, Cowell had scuttled all of the ships in shallow water, and Pellew was only able to set the wreckage on fire. Landing shore parties, the British destroyed all military supplies in the town and demolished the battery on Madura. With the destruction of the force in Griessie, the last of the Dutch naval forces in the Pacific were eliminated. British forces returned to the region in 1810 with a large scale expeditionary force that successfully invaded and captured Java in 1811, temporary removing the last Dutch colony east of Africa. ==Background== In 1804, at the start of the Napoleonic Wars, a powerful French squadron operating from Batavia harbour on the Dutch island colony of Java attacked a large and valuable British merchant convoy sailing from China near the Straits of Malacca in the Battle of Pulo Aura.〔Clowes, p. 336〕 The French attack was a failure, but the threat posed to British trade passing through the Strait of Malacca by French or Dutch warships had been clearly demonstrated. Determined to eliminate this threat, the commander of Royal Navy forces in the Indian Ocean—Rear-Admiral Sir Edward Pellew—ordered frigates to reconnoitre Dutch naval activity in the East Indies during the summer of 1806. The Dutch maintained a small squadron in the region under Rear-Admiral Hartsinck, principally intended to operate against pirates, consisting of several old 68-gun ships of the line, three frigates and a number of smaller vessels. Despite the obsolete nature of many of these ships, they nevertheless constituted a threat to British trade and Pellew's frigates raided Dutch harbours and merchant shipping extensively during their patrols.〔Gardiner, p. 81〕 At the Action of 26 July 1806, a Dutch convoy sailing along the southern coast of Celebes was attacked and defeated by one of Pellew's reconnaissance frigates, . Among the captured ships was the Dutch frigate and two large merchant vessels.〔Clowes, p. 386〕 Three months later, the frigate entered Batavia harbour itself, seizing the Dutch frigate at the Action of 18 October 1806.〔James, p. 267〕 These successes encouraged Pellew to conduct a larger scale operation, launching a major Raid on Batavia harbour on 27 November 1806. As his large squadron sailed into the bay, the surviving Dutch ships were driven on shore to avoid capture, boarding parties under Admiral Pellew's son Captain Fleetwood Pellew completing the destruction by setting the wrecks on fire.〔James, p. 268〕 A number of vessels, including all of the Dutch ships of the line, had escaped the raid. Hartsinck had sought to divide his forces shortly before Pellew's attack and consequently sent a number of vessels eastwards along the Javan coast under an American-born Dutch officer named Captain Cowell. Cowell's force eventually sheltered in a protected anchorage at the town of Griessie near Sourabaya, to the west of Batavia.〔 There the squadron rapidly deteriorated so that one ship of the line——had to be broken down into a sheer hulk and two others— and —were disarmed, their cannon transferred into batteries on shore.〔James, p. 357〕 Admiral Pellew was unable to return to Java early in 1807, as his ships were dispersed on separate operations across the Indian Ocean, some deploying as far west as the Red Sea. However, during the summer responsibility for the blockade of the French island bases of Île Bonaparte and Isle de France (now Mauritius) passed from Pellew to Rear-Admiral Albemarle Bertie at the Cape of Good Hope and Pellew was once again free to concentrate against the remainder of the Dutch squadron.〔Gardiner, p. 82〕 During the absence of his main force, Admiral Pellew had sent two frigates into Javan waters: ''Caroline'' under Captain Peter Rainier and HMS ''Psyche'' under his son Captain Fleetwood Pellew. These ships rapidly established the location and the state of the Dutch ships of the line, and then separated to raid Dutch merchant shipping, ''Psyche'' having considerable success at Semarang on 31 August when Captain Pellew destroyed two Dutch vessels, and captured three, including the Dutch 24-gun corvette ''Scipio'', which the British renamed ''Samarang''.〔Henderson, p. 81.〕 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「Raid on Griessie」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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