Battle of Mahé

The Battle of Mahé was a minor naval engagement of the last year of the French Revolutionary Wars, fought on 19 August 1801 in the harbour of Mahé in the Seychelles, a French colony in the Indian Ocean. Since the demise of the French Indian Ocean squadron in 1799, the Royal Navy had maintained dominance in the East Indies, controlling the shipping routes along which trade flowed and allowing the rapid movement of military forces around the theatre. French First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte had long-harboured ambitions of threatening British India, and in 1798 had launched an invasion of Egypt as an initial step to achieving this goal. The campaign had failed, and the French army in Egypt was under severe pressure by early 1801, partly due to the presence of a British squadron acting with impunity in the Red Sea.

To disrupt British ships supplying the Red Sea squadron the French Navy sent the newly built 36-gun frigate Chiffonne to the Western Indian Ocean under the command of Pierre Guiyesse. This ship, also carrying 32 exiled political prisoners, was instructed to operate from Mahé. After an eventual journey, Chiffonne arrived in the Seychelles in August and Guiyesse ordered his crew to effect repairs before the mission could begin. Anchored in a bay sheltered by coral reefs and protected by a hastily erected gun battery, he believed his ship would be safe from attack.

The British commander in the region, Rear-Admiral Peter Rainier, had assumed the French would send a force against the Red Sea squadron and ordered the 38-gun frigate HMS Sibylle under Captain Charles Adam to investigate. Adam sailed to Mahé and discovered the French ship undergoing repairs. Carefully manoeuvring through the coral reefs, Adam brought Sybille alongside Chiffonne and fought a brief but fiercely contested battle before Guiyesse was forced to surrender. A month later, the French brig Flèche, operating from the same harbour on the same mission, was intercepted and sunk by the brig HMS Victor. These operations were the last significant actions of the war in the Indian Ocean, the Peace of Amiens coming into effect in October.