Grand Port, August 1810: the battle of the bay

At the start of the nineteenth century the Isle de France was a thorn in the side of British trade. During the Napoleonic Wars the island served as a base for corsairs and French ships that successfully attacked English merchant vessels. London eventually sent a strong expedition to seize it. It began by taking Rodrigues, in 1809, which would serve as its base.

The south-east coast was far from defenceless. Under French occupation, twenty-seven defensive guns controlled access to the island, and the battery at Pointe du Diable, on the road to Vieux Grand Port, long kept the English from approaching Grand Port. The guns the French installed to defend this side of the island are still there. The ruins of French batteries also line Vieux Grand Port and Anse Petit Sable, and several have been restored in recent years.

Yet it was on this side that the British tried their luck, judging it the weakest. In 1810 a squadron of frigates under Captain Samuel Pym launched a determined attack on Grand Port.

On 20 August superior French naval reinforcements arrived under Commodore Duperré. The fighting was fierce, and it turned to disaster for the British squadron, most of which was forced to surrender. The Néréide, a thirty-six-gun frigate, was battered into submission: of a crew of 281 men, 92 were killed and only 52 came through unhurt. The Sirius and the Magicienne were set on fire by their own crews to keep them out of enemy hands.

A French engraving, Combat du Grand Port, whose title bears the date 24 August 1810, shows the bay the day after the action: Duperré’s ships on the left, the Néréide dismasted and surrendered beside them, and what may be the Sirius in flames above the wreck of the Magicienne. It is based on an oil painting by Pierre Julien Gilbert, held at the Musée de la Marine in Paris. This was one of the rare French naval victories over the British navy in the wars of 1793 to 1815.

The battle left behind a scene that Mahébourg holds dear. In grounds of nearly five hectares on the bank of the La Chaux river stands the château Gheude, also known as the Robillard house, a French colonial residence built around 1772. It was in one wing of this house that the two commanders of the English and French squadrons, both wounded in the battle, were nursed side by side.

The house is now home to the National History Museum. One room is devoted to the struggle between the French and the British for control of the Indian Ocean. On display are objects recovered from the wrecks of the Magicienne and the Sirius, the two British frigates sunk in Mahébourg bay in 1810; the sabre of Captain Drieux; the sword and telescope of Captain Rivington; the pistol and portrait of the corsair Robert Surcouf; and a series of eight lithographs by R. Temple on the capture of the island by British troops in December 1810.

The museum’s story, in fact, begins underwater. In 1933 and 1934 H. C. M. Austen, an engineer with the Mauritian railways, raised guns, mortars, part of a hull and bottles from the wreck of the Magicienne. In 1934 these pieces formed a museum of naval relics, set up in Port Louis. After the war the state bought the château Gheude, and the new museum opened its doors there on 15 September 1950.

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Four months’ reprieve

The victory did not change the outcome of the war. The French had undertaken to send their prisoners to the Cape of Good Hope or to England to be exchanged; they broke their word, and the prisoners were freed only on the arrival of a far more powerful British force. In December 1810 the main attack set out from Rodrigues. The troops landed in large numbers in the north of the island and quickly overcame the French, who capitulated. In the harbour of Port Louis, the victors seized those of Duperré’s ships still lying there, along with several British merchant ships captured earlier. The Néréide was recovered, but too badly damaged to return to service.

The island’s fate was sealed by the Treaty of Paris of 1814, which ceded it permanently to Great Britain.

The memorial to the Battle of Grand Port stands at Pointe des Régates, in Mahébourg. The bicentenary of the battle was marked in 2010, and the memorial was restored in 2017 and 2018. Together with the National History Museum, it forms the heart of a visit that can be extended along the coast road, to the guns of Pointe du Diable and on to Vieux Grand Port and its ruins. From the Mahébourg shore, one looks out over the bay where, for a few days in August 1810, the Isle de France played out its last reprieve.