page_title: East Indies theatre of the French Revolutionary Wars
section_title: British dominance
hierarchical_section_title: East Indies theatre of the French Revolutionary Wars / Campaigns / British dominance
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Combat de la Confiance, commandée par Robert Surcouf, et du Kent, le 7 octobre 1800English: Fight between the French Confiance (Robert Surcouf) and the Kent
context_page_description: The East Indies theatre of the French Revolutionary Wars was a series of campaigns related to the major European conflict known as the French Revolutionary Wars, fought between 1793 and 1801 between the new French Republic and its allies and a shifting alliance of rival powers. Although the Indian Ocean was separated by vast distance from the principal theatre of the conflict in Western Europe, it played a significant role due to the economic importance of the region to Great Britain, France's most constant opponent, of its colonies in India and the Far Eastern trade.
  Protection of British interests in the region fell primarily to the Royal Navy, supported by the military forces of the East India Company. Naval strategy sought to eliminate enemy forces in the region and provide convoy protection to the large East Indiamen merchant ships and smaller company ships which transported goods and wealth between Britain and its Asian colonies and trade partners.
context_section_description: During the summer of 1798, Forte and Prudente conducted a commerce raiding operation under Captain Ravanel in the Bay of Bengal and the Bali Strait which achieved moderate success but also saw the first of a number of mutinies among Sercey's crews. The French admiral then planned a joint operation with the Spanish squadron at Manila, sailing to Batavia in Brûle-Gueule, to be joined by Preneuse. He had ordered Ravanel to join his force there, but the French captain instead returned to Port Louis where Prudente was seized by the Malartic and sold as a privateer and Forte sent on a commerce raid in the Bay of Bengal in defiance of Sercey's orders. Prudente was captured by Daedalus at the Action of 9 February 1799 off the coast of Natal, while Forte was captured by Sybille off the mouth of the Hooghly River at the  Action of 28 February 1799.
  Sercey's fury at the seizure of his strongest frigates was compounded by the condition of Preneuse, which arrived at Batavia in a state of mutiny. Lhermitte had executed five crew on the journey and Sercey immediately sent the ship out again on a cruise off Borneo in an effort to contain the disaffection. With his forces unexpectedly reduced, Sercey then sent his remaining ships to Manila for operations with the Spanish, but the condition of the Spanish ships was so poor that no operations could be undertaken in 1798. An attack on the China Fleet was eventually attempted in January 1799, but on arrival at Macau the combined Spanish squadron refused to engage the powerful British escort and the entire force withdrew, pursued by Captain William Hargood in HMS Intrepid.
  Disappointed by the failure off Macau and weakened by losses to his squadron, Sercey withdrew to Île de France in the spring of 1799. There he sent Preneuse on a raiding cruise in the Mozambique Channel. On 20 September, Lhermitte fought a brief and inconclusive night engagement with a small squadron of Royal Navy ships in Algoa Bay, which led three weeks later to an inconclusive clash on 9 October with the 50-gun HMS Jupiter. Returning to Île de France with little to show for his three-month cruise, Lhermitte was intercepted off Port Louis by the blockade squadron of Adamant and HMS Tremendous at the Action of 11 December 1799 and Preneuse was driven onshore and destroyed. Sercey had already sent Brûle-Gueule back to France at the end of September with political prisoners from Île de France and more than a million in specie, the corvette eventually being wrecked with the loss of 132 lives on the Pointe du Raz on the Breton coast. Sercey, an admiral without a command, returned to France and retired from the Navy. He subsequently settled on Île de France.
  As the French naval presence in the Indian Ocean declined, the commerce raiding role was taken up by privateers. These fast vessels operated with considerable success against British merchant shipping, and protecting convoys from their depredations consumed a considerable proportion of Rainier's naval strength: gradually however they were intercepted and captured, including Adele in May 1800 and L'Uni in August 1800. Among the more notorious privateers was Iphigenie, which seized a packet ship, Pearl, in the Persian Gulf in October 1799. Pursued by the sloop HMS Trincomalee, the two fought a fierce engagement on 12 October at which both ships were destroyed and more than 200 men killed. Most dangerous among the privateersmen was Robert Surcouf, who sailed in Clarissa and then Confiance. In the latter he fought a significant battle off the Hooghly River on 9 October 1800 with the East Indiaman Kent. Eventually subdued by a boarding action, Kent lost 14 killed, including Captain Robert Rivington, and 44 wounded; Surcouf's men suffered 14 casualties. The privateer conflict continued to the end of the war, the large privateers Grand Hirondelle and Gloire remaining at sea into 1801 before being captured, and Courier and Surcouf's Confiance evading interception entirely.
caption: Combat de la Confiance, commandée par Robert Surcouf, et du Kent. Ambroise Louis Garneray
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