page_title: Battle of Pulo Aura
section_title: Aftermath
hierarchical_section_title: Battle of Pulo Aura / Aftermath
caption_attribution_description: English: Brilliant Naval Action of the East India Fleet. The representation of the Naval Action Fought in India 15th Feby 1804 wherein Capt. Dance.... defended the Ships under his Convoy, and ships Marengo... &amp; four frigates, Malacca 15 Feb 1804
context_page_description: The Battle of Pulo Aura was a minor naval engagement of the Napoleonic Wars, fought on 14 February 1804, in which a large convoy of Honourable East India Company East Indiamen, well-armed merchant ships, intimidated, drove off and chased away a powerful French naval squadron. Although the French force was much stronger than the British convoy, Commodore Nathaniel Dance's aggressive tactics persuaded Contre-Admiral Charles-Alexandre Durand Linois to retire after only a brief exchange of shot. Dance then chased the French warships until his convoy was out of danger, whereupon he resumed his passage toward British India. Linois later claimed that the unescorted British merchant fleet was defended by eight ships of the line, a claim criticised by contemporary officers and later historians.
  The battle occurred during an extended commerce raiding operation by a French squadron led by Linois in the ship of the line Marengo. Linois had sailed to the Indian Ocean in 1803 before the declaration of war, under orders to install garrisons in the French and Dutch colonies in the region and to prey on lightly defended British merchant shipping.
context_section_description: Nathaniel Dance and his fellow captains were highly praised in the aftermath of the battle: in saving the convoy they had prevented both the HEIC and Lloyd's of London from likely financial ruin, the repercussions of which would have had profound effects across the British Empire. The various commanders and their crews were presented with a £50,000 prize fund to be divided among them, and the Lloyd's Patriotic Fund and other national and mercantile institutions made a series of awards of ceremonial swords, silver plate and monetary gifts to individual officers. Lloyd's Patriotic Fund gave each captain a sword worth 50 pounds, and one to Royal Navy Lieutenant Robert Merrick Fowler, travelling as a passenger on Earl Camden, and one worth 100 pounds to Nathaniel Dance.
  Dance was specifically rewarded, receiving royal recognition when he was made a Knight Bachelor by King George III. He was also personally presented with the sum of £5,000 by the Bombay Insurance Company and an additional £500 a year for life by the HEIC. Dance immediately retired from the sea to Enfield Town, where he died in 1827. He refused to take full credit for the survival of the convoy, writing in reply to the award from the Bombay Insurance Company:
  Placed, by the adventitious circumstances of seniority of service and absence of convoy, in the chief command of the fleet intrusted to my care, it has been my good fortune to have been enabled, by the firmness of those by whom I was supported, to perform my trust not only with fidelity, but without loss to my employers. Public opinion and public rewards have already far outrun my deserts; and I cannot but be sensible that the liberal spirit of my generous countrymen has measured what they are pleased to term their grateful sense of my conduct, rather by the particular utility of the exploit, than by any individual merit I can claim.
  — Nathaniel Dance, quoted in William James' The Naval History of Great Britain during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, Volume 3, 1827.
  Among the passengers on the Indiamen were a number of Royal Navy personnel, survivors of the shipwreck of the exploratory vessel HMS Porpoise off the coast of New South Wales the previous year. This party—carried aboard Ganges, Royal George and Earl Camden—volunteered to assist the gun teams aboard their ships and Dance specifically thanked them in his account of the action. One was Lieutenant Robert Merrick Fowler, the former commander of Porpoise, who distinguished himself in a variety of capacities during the engagement.
  Some of the party had influential careers in the Navy, including the naval architect James Inman, who sailed on Warley, and John Franklin, who later became a polar explorer. Also aboard was Indian businessman Jamsetjee Jeejebhoy returning from the second of his five voyages to China.
  Linois continued his raiding, achieving some success against individual sailing ships, but failing to press successfully his numerical superiority against British naval forces; most notably at the Battle of Vizagapatam on 15 September 1804 and the Action of 6 August 1805. Ironically, Linois was eventually captured at the Action of 13 March 1806 after mistaking a squadron of British ships of the line for a merchant convoy in the mid-Atlantic. Linois was concerned throughout the engagement for the safety of his ships: with the nearest dockyard over 3,000 nmi (3,500 mi; 5,600 km) away at Île de France, he could not afford to suffer severe damage to his rigging or masts that would leave his squadron crippled. He also sought to defend his behaviour off Pulo Aura with the claim that the British convoy was protected by as many as eight ships of the line, and that he had performed heroically in saving his squadron from this overwhelming force. Subsequent historians have ridiculed this latter statement: William James wryly commented in his account of the action, written in 1827, that "it would be uncharitable to call into question the courage of Rear-admiral Linois" and William Laird Clowes said in 1900 that "his timidity and want of enterp
caption: Brilliant Naval Action of the East India Fleet, British propaganda poster celebrating the engagement, National Maritime Museum
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