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The Capture of the Chariot Royal*

by Donald E. Pusch

On 10 November 1756, the French transport ship Chariot Royal weighed anchor atthe port of Rochefort and began an ill-fated voyage toward Louisbourg on Ile Royale(Cape Breton Island). Under the command of Capitaine de Brûlot1 Jean-François LeLarge, the Chariot Royal anchored briefly in Aix Roads to take on additional cargo andthen headed out across the Bay of Biscay toward the northern coast of Spain, a standarddeparture route for ships bound for the French colonies of North America. In addition toher cargo, the Chariot Royal carried fourteen passengers and a crew of one hundred forty.The latter included Le Large, his son Jean-Aimable, and the ship’s second captainCharles-Michel Dailleboust, all three displaced Louisbourg colonials who were thenliving at Rochefort and employed in the service of the French Ministry of the Marine.2

On the morning of 29 November 1756, the lookout of the Chariot Royal sighted sailbearing west northwest at a distance of about six leagues. Fearing English warships, LeLarge set the Chariot Royal’s course east northeast, away from the suspect ship. Withinminutes, however, it was clear that the Chairot Royal had been sighted and that heradversary was in pursuit. By noon, the enemy’s advantage in both speed and size wasapparent, and Le Large made every effort to crowd on sail and to steer so as to take bestadvantage of the wind. The pursuit continued on into the late afternoon of 29 November,and by nightfall the other ship was close enough to be recognized as a heavily armedEnglish man-of-war.3

By 11 o’clock in the evening, distance between the two ships had narrowed to withincannon range and the pursuing ship began firing her forward chase cannons. Relocatingfour of his own cannons to the stern of the Chariot Royal, Le Large began returning fire ashort time later. At 2 o’clock the following morning, during a brief respite in theexchange of cannon fire, the Chariot Royal and her enemy were within hailing distanceof one another, and a demand for surrender was voiced to Le Large. Still hopeful ofescaping, he responded to this demand with additional cannon fire, some of whichdamaged the pursuing ship’s rigging and sails to the point where she was forced to dropback to make temporary repairs. These having soon been completed, the pursuit wascontinued up until dawn when the English ship once again closed on the Chariot Royaland engaged her in a fierce combat of cannon volleys and musket fire. Finally, with theChariot Royal disabled of her rigging and sails and unable to return fire, Le Large tookthe difficult decision to surrender his ship at 8 o’clock in the morning, Tuesday, 30November 1756.4

The capturing English warship was the third-rate Torbay commanded by Captain—later first lord of the Admiralty—Augustus Keppel. With 74 cannons, a crew of 650, anda slight speed advantage over the Chariot Royal, the Torbay had simply overhauled andout gunned the French transport ship.5 Now a prize of the English, the Chariot Royal wastaken first to Plymouth and then to Portsmouth where Le Large made his first officialreport of the capture in a letter to the Minister of the Marine dated 17 December 1756.6

* This article was originally published in Le Réveil Acadien, vol. 18, no. 4 (November 2002).

2

The capture of the Chariot Royal affords researchers an interesting set of historicaldocuments. For not only were the ship and her cargo seized by the English but also manyof the papers that had been onboard.7 Today, these are carefully preserved among thearchival holdings of the High Court of the Admiralty at the Public Record Office inLondon. Contained in these papers is the Chariot Royal’s passenger list, translated belowin full. Of interest for Acadian history and genealogy is the fact that several notableAcadian surnames are represented on this list. Also of note is the fact that there are fiveindividuals—Jean-Baptiste Sauvage, Pierre Girois, Jean Broun, Pierre Martin, and JeanLaure—who were attempting to return to Acadia after having been captured by theEnglish on a previous voyage. One can only imagine their distress and despair at beingcaptured a second time. And things would get worse: Just nineteen months later, on 26July 1758, Louisbourg would fall for the second time to the English, and it may well bethat none of these Acadians was able to return to his homeland again. Captain Le Largecertainly never did. After the English released him, he returned to Rochefort from whichport he made only one additional voyage—to Louisiana in 1758–1759—prior to hisdeath.8

Jean-François Le Large was born probably at Plaisance (Placentia, Newfoundland)ca. 17129 to Pierre Le Large and Catherine Beaujour.10 Sometime prior to 1715, the LeLarge family relocated to the site of Louisbourg during one of several English-imposedresettlements or expulsions that affected so many French inhabitants of Acadia and IleRoyale.11 It was at Louisbourg that young Jean-François spent the first half of his life andgained much of his seafaring experience.12 By his early twenties he was sufficientlyknowledgeable to qualify as a pilote hauturier13 and ship captain.14

Le Large’s adverse experiences with the English actually began several years prior tothe 1756 capture of the Chariot Royal. Sailing out of Louisbourg as a privateer in 1744,he was pursued and overtaken by an English corsair and, in the combat that ensued,received a musket-ball wound in the left arm.15 The following year, he was among thedefenders at the first siege of Louisbourg and had the unpleasant experience not only ofseeing his hometown fall to the English and their New England allies but of beingforcibly exiled to France.16 Because of his marine experience, especially in the coastalwaters of Acadia, he was immediately brought into the service of the King as a merchant-ship captain and ordered to join the d’Anville expedition, a hastily assembled flotilla sentto New France in 1746 to parry a suspected English invasion of Canada. During thecourse of that expedition, he was engaged on at least two occasions in close-order navalcombat, once with an English corsair near Merligueche (Lunenburg, Nova Scotia) andtwo months later with boarding parties dispatched from two English corsairs near themouth of the Saint John River on the coast of New Brunswick.17 Returning to Franceafter his service on the d’Anville expedition, Le Large was assigned to re-supplymissions, first to the coasts of Saintonge and Poitou and then on a succession of elevenmissions to the French colonies of North America and the West Indies. On one suchmission in 1747, while passing near Jamaica en route to Louisiana, he encountered anentire squadron of English warships, which he successfully evaded by mimicking themaneuvers of an English merchantman.18 The frequency of these and other closeencounters with the English—well documented in his service dossier—suggests that hiseventual capture by a ship such as the Torbay was a statistical inevitability.

3

Although Le Large’s encounters with the English put him in harm’s way on manyoccasions, the general hardships of his profession proved to be his real nemesis. His lastvoyage—to the inhospitable climate of Louisiana in 1758–1759—was the longest he hadexperienced in the twelve years since the d’Anville expedition and proved to be the mostdamaging to this health. Suffering from what was most likely tuberculosis,19 he soughtrelief during a six-months’ stay at the therapeutic mineral baths in the south of France butfound no cure,20 eventually returning to Rochefort and dying there on 18 August 1761 atthe reported age of forty-nine years.21

As to others on the Chariot Royal: The second captain, Charles-Michel Dailleboust(sometimes d’Ailleboust), was born at Louisbourg on 1 October 1735, the son of Charles-Joseph Dailleboust and Marie-Josephe Bertrand.22 The elder Dailleboust was an officer ofthe colonial regular troops who, like Le Large, was present at the first siege ofLouisbourg in 1745 and participated, although to a lesser extent, in the d’Anvilleexpedition the following year.23

Jean-Aimable Le Large, son of the elder Le Large and first wife Marguerite-LouiseSanson, was born 17 April 1738 at Louisbourg.24 Taking up his father’s profession, theyounger Le Large had completed five high-seas voyages with his father prior to theChariot Royal’s capture and sixteen months later was with his father once again on a re-supply mission to New Orleans.25 Trained well by his father, the younger Le Large wenton to complete a highly successful career in the French navy, eventually attaining therank of vice admiral in 1798.26

With respect to the passengers, the scant personal information given on the passengerlist makes it difficult to positively identify all of them. It is noted, however, that some ofthe same names appear a few years earlier on the January 1752 census of FrenchAcadia.27 Two such names—Pierre Forest (Forés on the passenger list) and Pierre Sire(Cyr on the passenger list)—were enumerated in the Memeramkouk area, and fourothers—Jean Sauvage, Olivier Saunier, Pierre Martin, and Jean Brun (Broun on thepassenger list)—were enumerated in the Chipoudy area.

The second of the two named missionaries is Father Etienne Le Goff, a member ofthe Brittany Récollets who had served at Louisbourg on several occasions between 1729and 1753. From 1742 to 1745 he held the post of ministre provincial of Recollets ofBrittany.28

The passenger list follows:29

[page 1:]

Rochefort Colonies 1756

List of the passengers embarkedon the King’s flûte30 the ChariotRoyal bound for Ile Royale

To wit:

A la Table31

M[onseigne]ur Guillaumat of the diocese of ParisMissionary

4

M[onsieur] le Goff of the diocese of Léonin Brittany, idem [same as previous, i.e., missionary]

Passengers on rationsof the munitionnaire32

Pilot’s mate (aide pilotte) from Louisbourg, camein this capacity from the said place to France on theKing’s [war]ship Heros

Jean Henri Morel, half ration

Acadianson simple rations

Joseph LeblancP[ierr]e ForésPierre CyrOlivier Saunier

[page 2:]

Other sailorsAcadians captured

by the English

Jean B[a]p[tis]te Sauvage of BeaubassinP[ier]re GiroisJean BrounP[ier]re MartinJean Laure

I pray Monsieur Le Large, capitaine debrûlot, commanding the King’s flûtethe Chariot Royal, to receive on hisship the passengers named above and onthe previous page, to whom subsistencewill be furnished according to the categorieson the present list during the crossingfrom France to Ile Royale. AtRochefort, 10 November 1756.

[Signed:] RuisImbito33

[end ms]

5

End Notes

1 During this period in the French navy, there were four intermediate officer gradesthat were filled primarily by commoners. The grades were lieutenant de frégate,capitaine de frégate, capitaine de brûlot, and capitaine de flûte. James Pritchard, LouisXV’s Navy, 1748–1762: A Study of Organization and Administration (Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1987), 61.

2 Depositions, respectively, of Jean-François [Le] Large, Jean [Le] Large, and Charlesd’Ailleboust taken at Portsmouth, 17 December 1756; Public Record Office, High Courtof the Admiralty, prize papers of the Chariot Royal, HCA 32/178, part 1; microfilm,National Archives of Canada, reel B-5734 [hereinafter cited as Chariot Royal prizepapers].

3 “Detail du Combat de La flute du Roy le Chariot Royal Commandé par LargeCapitaine du Brulot,” Plymouth, 12 December 1756, attached to the letter of M. Le Largeof 12 December 1756; a document from the dossier de service of Jean-François Le Large,Archives Nationales, Marine C7 177; microfilm, Archives Nationales [hereinafter cited asLe Large service dossier].

4 “Suitte Du Journal de La flutte du Roy Le chariot Royal que je Commandois,”undated (ca. 17 December 1756), attached to the letter of M. Le Large of 17 December1756; Le Large service dossier. The capture of the Chariot Royal is touched upon brieflyin Christopher Moore’s Louisbourg Portraits: Life in an Eighteenth-Century GarrisonTown (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1962), 201; however, the event was placedincorrectly in 1757. This error can be traced to an incorrect date given in one account ofLe Large’s service, apparently the only one filmed by the National Archives of Canadaand the one on which Moore’s account is based. See “Etat des services du S. Le Largenatif de L’Isle Royale Capitaine de Brulot au Port de Rochefort mort le 17 Août 1761,” 8June 177?; Le Large service dossier. The National Archives of Canada microfilm (F-795)attributes that document to Marine C7 166. The author’s microfilm, obtained directlyfrom the Archives Nationales in March 2002, attributes the document to Marine C7 177.

5 Keppel’s account of the combat is in general agreement with that of Le Large exceptwith respect to casualties onboard the Chariot Royal. Le Large reported (note 4 above)two killed and one wounded. Keppel reported three killed and several wounded. Entry of30 November 1758, “Journal of the Proceedings on board his Majesty’s ShipTorbay…between 1st of February 1756 & 31st of January 1757,” Public Record Office,Admiralty Records, ADM 51/1001 part 2; PRO photocopy. Le Large claimed that, afterhis capture, he learned from members of the Torbay’s crew that seventeen of Keppel’smen had been killed and eleven wounded. “Etat des Services des Navigations du Sr.Large, tant en Leurope, L’affrique et Lamérique,” attached to an undated (ca. 1758) coverletter to de Moras; Le Large service dossier.

6 Le Large at Portsmouth to Minister of the Marine, 17 December 1756; Le Largeservice dossier.

7 Charles d’Ailleboust, in his deposition (note 2 above), indicated that some papershad been thrown overboard prior to the Chariot Royal’s capture. This was apparently acommon practice, especially in regard to packets of official correspondence.

6

8 “Services du S. Le Large…Extrait des Rôles d’Equipages déposés au Bureaugénéral des Armements & des Classes du Port, & Département de Rochefort,” 8 June1773; Le Large service dossier.

9 Le Large’s place of birth is stated in the record of his formal certification tocommand ships at sea. Lettres de maîtrise of Jean-François Le Large, 22 November 1734,Archives départementales de la Charente-Maritime, La Rochelle, série amirauté deLouisbourg, B 270, fol. 30v–32v; microfilm, National Archives of Canada, reel F433. LeLarge’s supposed date of birth is based on the analysis of Christopher Moore contained inthe unpublished typescript, “Annotations to ‘Louisbourg Portraits’ by ChristopherMoore,” 44; Archives of Fortress Louisbourg. This important work, called to theattention of the writer by Mr. Ken Donovan, historian, Fortress Louisbourg NationalHistoric Site of Canada, contains the unpublished documentation supporting the facts putforth in Moore’s Louisbourg Portraits.

10 No birth record has been found; however, the parents’ names are established fromthe record of Le Large’s marriage to first wife Marguerite-Louise Sanson in 1737. Etat-civil recordation of the marriage act of Jean-François Le Large and Marguerite-LouiseSanson, Notre-Dame-des-Anges de Louisbourg, 8 July 1737; Archives Nationales,Colonies G1 406, register 4, f. 66v; copy from microfilm provided by the NationalArchives of Quebec.

11 “Recensement des habitants Etablis dans la havre de Louisbourg…fait le quatriemejanvier 1715”; Archives Nationales, Colonies G1 466, register 51; copy from microfilmprovided by the National Archives of Quebec.

12 Le Large’s life at Louisbourg is chronicled in Moore, Louisbourg Portraits, 145–202.

13 A pilote hauturier was a rating awarded to mariners who could demonstrate theirability to make celestial and solar observations, use the magnetic compass, and performthe calculations needed to navigate ships on the high seas. Bourdé de Villeheut, Manueldes marins ou explication des termes de marine, 2 vols. (Lorient: Julien Le Jeune fils,1773), 2:150 (“pilote hauturier”).

14 Lettres de maîtrise of Jean-François Le Large.15 “Etat des Services des Navigations du Sr. Large, tant en Leurope, L’affrique et

Lamérique,” attached to an undated (ca. 1758) letter to de Moras; Le Large servicedossier. A less reliable account, written several years after Le Large’s death, claims thathe was wounded in the right arm. Declaration of Morin, Rochefort, 24 June 1773; LeLarge service dossier.

16 “Etat des Services des Navigations du Sr. Large, tant en Leurope, L’affrique etLamérique,” attached to an undated (ca. 1758) letter to de Moras; Le Large servicedossier.

17 Ibid.18 Ibid.19 The condition was described as ethisie. Petition of Widow Le Large to Minister of

the Marine, undated (ca. May 1773); Le Large service dossier.20 Declaration of Morin, Rochefort, 24 June 1773; Le Large service dossier.

7

21 Burial record of Jean-François Le Large, 19 August 1761, burial register for theyear 1761, St. Louis de Rochefort, fol. 16; Departmental Archives, Charente Maritime;microfilm 1732968, item 6, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

22 Baptismal record of Charles-Michel Dailleoust, 1 October 1735, register ofbaptisms, marriages, and burials, Notre-Dame-des-Anges de Louisbourg. ArchivesNationales, G1 406, reg. 4, fol. 58; microfilm 0959785, Family History Library, Salt LakeCity, Utah.

23 H. Paul Thibault’s biographical sketch of Charles-Joseph d’Ailleboust in GeorgeW. Brown, David M. Hayne, and Francess G. Halfpenny, gen. eds., Dictionary ofCanadian Biography, 11 vols. (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1966–1982), 3:5–7.

24 Baptismal record of Jean-Aimable Le Large, 18 April 1738, register of baptisms,marriages, and burials, Notre-Dame-des-Anges de Louisbourg. Archives Nationales,G1 407, reg. 1, fol. 6-6v; microfilm 0959785, Family History Library, Salt Lake City,Utah.

25 During this voyage, Jean-Aimable Le Large served briefly as second captain of theprize ship Judie, a slaver captured during the crossing. “Journal de La Campagne de laflutte du Roy La fortune venant du Missisipy…,” 25 March 1758 – 10 May 1759, fol.12v; Archives Nationales, Marine 4 JJ19, item 81; microfilm, Library of CongressLouisiana Colonial Records Project, reel 20.

26 Jacques Aman, Les officiers bleus dans la marine française au XVIIIe siècle(Genève: Librarie Droz, 1976), 189.

27 “General List of Inhabitants of French Acadia by Names, Families, Villages, andNumber of Boys and Girls in Each Family, January 1752,” in Charles C. Trahan, trans.,Acadian Census 1671–1752 (Rayne, Louisiana: Hébert Publications, 1993), 142–50.

28 A. J. B. Johnston, Religion in Life at Louisbourg, 1713–1758 (Kingston: McGill-Queen’s Univ. Press, 1984), 150.

29 “List des Passageurs embarqués sur la flutte du Roy le Chariot Royal, expediéepour l’Isle Royalle,” Rochefort, 10 November 1756; Chariot Royal prize papers.

30 A flûte was a two- or three-masted transport ship whose design was a compromiseamong cargo carrying capacity, maneuverability, speed, and armament. Bourdé deVillehuet, Manuel des marins, 1:257 (“flûte”).

31 Meaning, essentially, “at the captain’s table.” These were passengers of status whowere furnished prepared meals at the expense of the captain. The captain was, in turn,reimbursed according to the number of individuals listed as à la table on the ship’spassenger list. Ibid., 2:230 (“table du capitaine”).

32 Munitionnaires were businessmen (or business firms) who contracted to furnishfood for ships’ crews. Such food was generally dispensed in units of rations and halfrations, the type, size, and quality being controlled by royal ordinances. On large ships,the munitionnaire provided an employee called a commis who was responsible fordispensing daily rations. Ibid., 2:112 (“munitionnaire”).

33 Charles-Claude de Ruis Embito de la Chesnardière was appointed commissairegénéral at Rochefort in October 1754 and ordonnateur of the same jurisdiction inJanuary 1755. In June 1757, he succeeded to the position of intendant at Rochefort. D.

8

Neuville, État sommaire des Archives de la Marine antérieures à la Révolution (1898;reprinted, Neudeln, Liechtenstein: Kraus Reprint, 1977), 123 n. 1.