Bombardment of Algiers (1816)

Background

Following the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, the Royal Navy no longer needed the Barbary states as a source of supplies for Gibraltar and their fleet in the Mediterranean Sea. This freed Britain to exert considerable political pressure to force the Barbary states to end their piracy and practice of enslaving European Christians. In early 1816, Exmouth undertook a diplomatic mission to Tunis, Tripoli, and Algiers, backed by a small squadron of ships of the line, to convince the Deys to stop the practice and free the Christian slaves. The Deys of Tunis and Tripoli agreed without any resistance, but the Dey of Algiers was more recalcitrant and the negotiations were stormy. Exmouth believed that he had managed to negotiate a treaty to stop the slavery of Christians and returned to England. However, due to confused orders, Algerian troops massacred 200 Corsican, Sicilian, and Sardinian fishermen who were under British protection just after the treaty was signed. This caused outrage in Britain and Europe, and Exmouth's negotiations were seen as a failure.

As a result, Exmouth was ordered to sea again to complete the job and punish the Algerians. He gathered a squadron of five ships of the line (, , , , and ), one 50-gun spar-decked frigate (), four conventional frigates (, , , and ), and four bomb ships (HMS , , , and ). HMS Queen Charlotte—100 guns—was his flagship and Rear Admiral David Milne was his second in command aboard HMS Impregnable, 98 guns. This squadron was considered by many to be an insufficient force, but Exmouth had already unobtrusively surveyed the defences of Algiers; he was very familiar with the town and was aware of a weakness in the field of fire of the defensive batteries. He believed that more large ships would have interfered with each other without being able to bring much more fire to bear. In addition to the main fleet, there were five sloops (, , , , and ), eight ships' boats armed with Congreve rockets, and some transports to carry the rescued slaves. When the British arrived in Gibraltar, a squadron of five Dutch frigates: HNLMS Melampus (ex HMS Melampus), Diana (ex HMS Diana), Frederica Sophia Wilhelmina, Dageraad, Amstel and the corvette Eendracht, led by Vice-Admiral Theodorus Frederik van Capellen, offered to join the expedition. Exmouth decided to assign them to cover the main force from Algerian flanking batteries, as there was insufficient space in the mole for the Dutch frigates.

Prelude

Main article: Bombardment of Algiers order of battle

The day before the attack, the frigate Prometheus arrived and its captain W. B. Dashwood attempted to secretly rescue the British Consul and his wife and infant. Some of the rescue party were discovered and arrested.

The plan of attack was for the larger ships to approach in a column. They were to sail into the zone where the majority of the Algerian guns could not be brought to bear. Then, they were to come to anchor and bombard the batteries and fortifications on the mole to destroy the defences. Simultaneously, —50 guns—was to anchor off the mouth of the harbour and bombard the shipping inside the mole. To protect Leander from the shore battery, frigates and were to sail inshore and bombard the battery. Troops would then storm ashore on the mole with sappers of the Corps of Royal Engineers.

Battle

Exmouth in Queen Charlotte anchored approximately 75 m off the mole, facing the Algerian guns. However, a number of the other ships anchored out of position, notably Admiral Milne aboard HMS Impregnable, who was 370 m from where he should have been. This error reduced the effectiveness of these ships and exposed them to fiercer Algerian fire. Some of the other ships sailed past Impregnable and anchored in positions closer to the plan. The unfortunate gap created by the misplaced HMS Impregnable was closed by the frigate HMS Granicus and the sloop Heron.

One sloop had been fitted out as an explosion vessel, with 143 barrels of gunpowder aboard, and Milne asked at 20:00 that it be used against the "Lighthouse battery", which was mauling his ship. The vessel was exploded, but to little effect, and against the wrong battery.

Despite this, the Algerian batteries could not maintain fire and, by 22:15, Exmouth gave the order for the fleet to weigh anchor and sail out of range, leaving to keep firing to suppress any further resistance. The wind had changed and was blowing from the shore, which helped the fleets depart. The allied squadron had fired over 50,000 round shot using 118 tons of gunpowder, and the bomb vessels had fired 960 explosive mortar shells. The Algerian forces had 308 guns and 7 mortars.

Aftermath

The following day at noon, Exmouth sent the following letter to the Dey:

He warned that if they were not accepted, then he would continue the action. The Dey accepted the terms, not realising that they were a bluff, as the fleet had already fired off almost all of its ammunition. A treaty was signed on 24 September 1816. The room it was signed in had been hit by nine round shot and was a perfect ruin. The Dey freed 1,083 Christian slaves and the British Consul and repaid the ransom money taken in 1816, about £80,000. Over 3,000 slaves in total were later freed. Drescher notes Algiers as 'the sole case in the sixty years of British slave trade suppression in which a large number of British lives were lost in actual combat.' However, despite British naval efforts, it has been difficult to assess the long-term impact of the Bombardment of Algiers, as the Dey reconstructed Algiers, replacing Christian slaves with Jewish labour, and the Barbary slave trade continued under subsequent Deys (see Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle (1818)).

In 1824 the last Dey of Algiers, Hussein Dey expelled the British consul. A British fleet under Admiral Sir Harry Burrard Neale was sent to reinforce the treaty of 1816. Arriving off the port of Algiers on 11 July, there was a short engagement with over thirty Algerine gunboats a few days later before the fleet withdrew. Two weeks later the British fleet returned and had to threaten to bombard the town before the 1816 treaty was renewed.

References

Bibliography

• Edwin John Brett, Brett's Illustrated Naval History of Great Britain, from the Earliest Period to the Present Time: A Reliable Record of the Maritime Rise and Progress of England (1871), Publishing Office, London.
• C. Northcote Parkinson, Britannia Rules: The Classic Age of Naval History 1793–1815 (1977), Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
• William Osler, The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth (1841)
• C. Northcote Parkinson, Edward Pellew, Viscount Exmouth (1934)
• Mariner's Mirror (1941)
• (1817), "Dispatches from Admiral Lord Exmouth, G.C.B., addressed to John Wilson Croker, Esq," in:The Annual Register, Or, A View of the History, Politics, and Literature for the Year 1816, pp. 230–240; and "Dutch official account of the battle", ibid., pp. 240–243
• Salamé, A. (1819) A Narrative of the Expedition to Algiers in the Year 1816, John Murray, London.
• Seymour Drescher, Abolition: A History of Slavery and Antislavery (2009), Cambridge University Press.

References

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5. Seymour Drescher (2009), p. 235
6. Micheal Clodfelter, Warfare and Armed Conflicts, page 198
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11. Northcote Parkinson (1977), p. 160
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