Searching ship's list for "Le Foudroyant" 1806

[lehuedelm]

Hello,

This is my first message to people in the virtual World Naval Ships Forums.
I am an ethnologist and doing some research on an ancestor who sailed on French ships in the 19th century. I am not sure if anyone in your group can help me in the research question that I have undertaken. Here is my quest.

I am trying to find the list of names of sailors who were on the Foudroyant in 1806 (sailing from France, possibly to he coast of Canada - Newfoundland and Cape Breton). My ancestor, Louis Marie Léhuédé, may have been one of these sailors. He left a ship in 1806 and settled in Cape Breton. All the people with this family name descend from this person and his wife, Angelique Gaudet.

I have found the names of all of the boats that he worked on (cabotage) from 1800 to 1805 in the archives of Nantes in France (thanks to help from a friend who lives near Nantes, in France).

My ancestor came to a small community in Cape Breton with four other sailors (three with the family name of LeFort and one with the family name of Chapelaine). In collaboration with the Centre de généalogie of this area, we are trying to identify the last ship that these five people would have been on before we think "deserting" (we are not sure of this last fact). The name given in the archival documents is the "Foudroyant". We would like to confirm his presence on this boat by seeing the list of sailors and also the names of the others men who came to Cape Breton with him.

If anyone knows how I can get access to the list, I would be very grateful.

Or, if anyone can help me in this search, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,
Barbara

[qprdave]

Welcome to the Forum, Barbara

I do hope that you will get, at least some information that you require.

It might be a good idea to leave your request, here for a few days and then have it moved to the French Section where it might get a larger viewing audience.

Best of luck with your research

Dave

[emason]

I think there must be some confusion about which ship (or the dates) we are taking about. HMS Foudroyant was a ship of the Royal Navy, built in 1798, in fact Nelson used Foudroyant as his flagship from 1799 until 1801.

In 1806 Britain was involved in the Napoleonic wars with the French, and in March of that year the Foudroyant was in battle with a couple of French ships.

There was an earlier French Foudroyant which was captured by the British in 1758, after which HMS Foudroyant was named.

[JackW1208]

There was a French Ship Foudroyant:

The Foudroyant ("Lightning") was a Tonnant class 80-gun ship of the line of the French Navy.

She was started in Rochefort from 1793, and renamed to Dix-huit fructidor in 1798 in honour of the Coup of 18 fructidor an V , as she was still on keel. She was eventually launched as Foudroyant.

She took part in cruises in the Caribbean under Villaret de Joyeuse.

On 15 September 1806, while under jury rig some 15 miles off Havana, she encountered HMS Anson, under Captain Charles Lydiard. Anson, mistakenly believing Foudroyant distressed, attacked, and was driven off.

She took part in the Battle of the Basque Roads.

She was eventually broken up in 1834.

Jack.

[emason]

The nerve of those devious French matelots, naming one of their ships after one of ours! :)

[lehuedelm]

Hello and thank you for answering.

In effect there are more than one vessel with the name of Foudroyant. I have found nine ships with this name, one of which is English. The dates the nine ships with this name were operative are as follows: 1) 1668-1690 2) 1691-1692 3) November 1692 4) 1693-1713 5) 1724 6) 1751-1758 7) 1799-1833 8) 1885-1909 and 9) 1885-1909.

The English ship that you mention, the HMS Foudroyant appears to have been in action in 1798. She became a Nelson flagship in the Mediterrean in 1799-1800 and took part in the recapture of Naples from the French, the recapture of Malta and the taking of several French vessels. She got her name from an earlier French ship le Foudroyant that was captured by the English in 1758 by the HMS Monmouth. (All of this according to the National Museum of the Royal Navy).

However, the ship that I am interested in is another one. The commander of the Foudroyant that I wish to discover was Philippe Willaumez from Belle-Ile-en-Mer, France. It arrived in Brest, France on 27th February 1807 after being on the seas for fourteen months and a half. During this time it was supposedly in the Altantic on the American and Canadian side. The vessel was suppose to land in England in 1805. This was abandoned. It left Brest in December 1805. It was part of a fleet led by Jerome Bonaparte.

This Foudroyant is the one that my ancestor is suppose to have been on. However, he also had a brother who was a sailor. And I am afraid that the information that I have may be in effect about his brother. This is why it is important to see the ship's list of sailors.

Anyway I wil continue my search and hopefully one day get a copy of the list to see how my ancestor ended up on the island of Cape Breton with four other sailors.

Once again thank you.

[lehuedelm]

Hello,

I posted the following message on the "new members" page recently and another member suggested that I post it on the "French Ships and crews" page. So here goes :

I am an ethnologist and doing some research on an ancestor who sailed on French ships in the 19th century. I am not sure if anyone in your group can help me in the research question that I have undertaken. Here is my quest.

I am trying to find the list of names of sailors who were on the Foudroyant in 1806 (sailing from France, possibly to he coast of Canada - Newfoundland and Cape Breton). My ancestor, Louis Marie Léhuédé, may have been one of these sailors. He left a ship in 1806 and settled in Cape Breton. All the people with this family name descend from this person and his wife, Angelique Gaudet.

I have found the names of all of the boats that he worked on (cabotage) from 1800 to 1805 in the archives of Nantes in France (thanks to help from a friend who lives near Nantes, in France).

My ancestor came to a small community in Cape Breton with four other sailors (three with the family name of LeFort and one with the family name of Chapelaine). In collaboration with the Centre de généalogie of this area, we are trying to identify the last ship that these five people would have been on before we think "deserting" (we are not sure of this last fact). The name given in the archival documents is the "Foudroyant". We would like to confirm his presence on this boat by seeing the list of sailors and also the names of the others men who came to Cape Breton with him.

If anyone knows how I can get access to the list, I would be very grateful.

Or, if anyone can help me in this search, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,
Barbara

[qprdave]

I have moved Barbara's initial thread from the "New Members" Section to here. This keeps it all together and everyone knows what has previously been said.

Dave

[lehuedelm]

Thank you Dave for placing all of the information together on the forum "French ships and crews" to help others eventually help me in this quest.

I am very new to this virtual way of communicating to find information through forums. And I must admit I feel at times at a loss.

I realize that the list that I am looking for is in some archive in France. I have already written to the Minister of Defense in France (history section) over a year ago asking for information about this sailor. At the time I did not have the name of the vessel Le Foudroyant (1806). They did send an automatic reply at the time saying that they would get back to me.

But, I have been told by French friends that all of the searching to find answers to the countless requests is done by volunteers and that they have a backlog. And of course, I am sure that there are many more pressing questions to be answered than this one about an ancestor who is long gone.

I will continue this search. Perhaps my solution is to make my way to France and visit archives that might have these documents. They do exist. But where is the mystery. It is a shame that they have not been digitilized and placed online, But this is probably a costly and time consuming job.

Once again I thank you.
Barbara

[qprdave]

Barbara

You don't say where you live but have you tried your French Embassy? Obviously you won't get the information that you require from them but they may be able to give you contact information to the French Version of The British National Archives. They may even narrow it down to the French Maritime Archives, if one exists.
there are websites that advertise Researchers that will go to the National Archives in London and do the work for you, for a fee. You might be guided to a French version. I'm sure that they have them.

Hope this helps a little

Dave

[lehuedelm]

Hello and thank you for the suggestion Dave. I appreciate your time and your help.

I have already found the equivalent in France that you suggest. I have also found the addresses where all of the archives for this type of document are located. As a matter of fact, I am making my way through the sites now to see if I can find the correct options for finding the list of sailors for Le Fourdoyant 1806.

I also am very lucky that two people in France are trying to help me. Both are familiar with searching for these types of documents and both are interested in the naval history of Acadians (I am an Acadian). I guess eventually one of us will get access to the list (that of course does exist in one of these archives). It was thanks to one of these people that I actually have all of the information about my ancestor's career on ships between 1800 and 1805, his place of birth, his parents names and so on.

In fact, I have actually visited Louis-Marie Lehuédé's place of birth (Batz-sur-mer) three times since these discoveries. I have also written an article (in French) in our local historical bulletin about this discovery. I was the first person from here to visit the birthplace of this ancestor (who is the ancestor of all of the Canadian Lehuédé's).

To answer your question about where I live and the French embassy:

I live on Cape Breton Island where my ancestor arrived in 1806 for the first time. He married into the Acadian community in 1813. I teach at the francophone university of Sainte-Anne, a small post secondary institution that caters to the French speaking population (4 per cent of Nova Scotia's population is French speaking) and to some francophiles (interested in pursuing their studies in French).

We have several campuses located in the Acadian communities of Nova Scotia. I am at the Saint-Joseph-du-Moine campus. Our main campus is in Church Point. We also have a more recent campus that is located in Halifax, the capital of Nova Scotia.

As to the French embassy, it is in Ottawa, which is quite a distance from Nova Scotia. To be frank, I do not believe that they can give me more information than I have already found to date. They will just send me to the sites that I am already visiting and to whom I have already written.

Anyway, I am quite convinced that eventually I will find the correct archives. I think that I will call one of them with my question and at least then I can be directed to the centre in France that holds this specific "rôles d'équipage" (list of sailors) for Le Foudroyant 1806.

Once again I do thank for taking the time to consider my question about the Foudroyant of 1806.

Sincerely,
Barbara

[lehuedelm]

Update on my search for Le Foudroyant information

Hello from Barbara,

For anyone who will eventually be interested in the Foudroyant under Willaumez (1805-1807) there is an excellent section in the book "The Naval History of Great Britain During the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, volume 4, 1805-1807", written by W.M. James. The book was published in 1822-23. However, there is a re-publication (2002) with an introduction by Andrew Lambert who is professor of Naval History at King, College in London.

In addition, after several dead ends at archives in France, I have written to the National Archives in France, hoping that this path will lead me to the muster role and even perhaps (if one exists) Willaumez's ship's log during this part of his naval career (1805-1807). Perhaps I am being too hopeful.

Anyway, once again thank you to the people who answered my initial question.

Sincerely,
Barbara