The Frenchman Pierre Beaumarchais has founded a…
December 1782 CE
The French and Spanish supply the American rebels with weapons, munitions, clothes, and provisions that will never be paid for.
Beaumarchais contracts for the transport of the supplies in convoys.
Even so, the Royal Navy has captured many of the transport vessels.
Beaumarchais assembles one convoy in December 1782.
He meets his captains in Bordeaux, then supervises the loading of his vessels.
The plan is to sail for Port-au-Prince, Saint Domingue, then on to America to supply the American colonists.
The convoy consists of five ships.
Alexander, a corvette that Beaumarchais had purchased in 1781 in Bordeaux, is under the command of Commander Stephen Gregory, who has an American privateer commission issued in France (a "Congress" commission) and sails under a French ensign and an American pennant.
She has a mixed American and French crew of one hundred and two men and is armed with twenty-four long nine-pounder guns.
She is of about five hundred tons burthen and carries a cargo of stores and provisions.
Aimable Eugénie, which is named after Beaumarchais' daughter, is under the command of Nicolas Baudin.
She mounts thirty-six guns and has a crew of one hundred and thirty men; she is the primary escort for the convoy.
Beaumarchais had bought her at Nantes in March 1782 for £t300,000.
Ménagère, which is under the command of François Jérome Foligné-Deschalonges, has a burthen of 600 tons (bm) and is a two decked vessel, launched in 1775 or '76.
She is a former sixty-four-gun ship of the line, and now armed en flûte, with twenty-six twelve-pounders on her main deck and four six-pounders on her forecastle and quarterdeck.
She has a crew of two hundred and twelve men and carries one hundred tons of gunpowder plus naval stores and bale goods.
Dauphin Royal is under the command of Antoine Chambert.
She is a transport purchased and armed at Bordeaux for the Marine Royale.
She is of 300 tons burthen (bm), armed with twenty-eight guns and carries a crew of one hundred and twenty men.
The convoy also includes an unknown American privateer brig with fourteen guns and a crew of seventy men.
On December 9, 1782 the convoy sails from the mouth of the Gironde for the West Indies and from there America.
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