Admiral Zacharie Allemand - A rare French naval success story ?

Hi Kevin, Thanks for your interesting post - a couple of things: 1) where do these interesting comments in quotation marks come from - I'd be interested in following it up 2) John was really asking about Allemand, and certainly was not suggesting that Cochrane was a perfect individual. Your question is a fair one - my assumption was that that he was referring to Thomas Cochrane, but either way, there isn't any need to bite his head off.

@Zack White I didn't 'bite anyone's head off.' I was actually posting some of what I thought was interesting information as well as asking which Cochrane he was referring to.

The comments on Cochrane and Cockburn are from John Elting's Amateurs, To Arms! A Military History of the War of 1812, page 79 for Cockburn and page 201 for Cochrane.

The War of 1812, which is part of the Napoleonic period as one of the main belligerents in that series of wars was also one of the main belligerents in the War of 1812.

What I failed to do was to name a French naval officer who was outstanding and Napleon's best admiral was Latouche-Treville, who defeated Nelson twice when Nelson operated against the Boulogne Flotilla. Unfortunately, he died in 1804.

There were a few other French naval successes in the wars such as the battle of Grande Port in the Indian Ocean where a French frigate squadron destroyed a Royal Navy frigate squadron. Admiral Missiessy conducted a successful small campaign in the West Indies in 1805 and there were ship-to-ship victories by the French, such as the one between the French frigate La Venus and the British ship Ceylon in the Indian Ocean in September 1809. Charles Durand de Linois defeated six British ships with three French at Algeciras in 1801. Those actions are usually overlooked in the long view of the naval war.

And it should be noted that the French Navy contributed significant troops to the Grande Armee on land-infantrymen, artillerymen, and combat engineers especially in Spain, Austria in 1809, Russia and in 1813.

Hi Kevin, then perhaps it is worth thinking about tone when posting comments? If i have read it and come to the wrong conclusion about the intent and tone, then it may well be the case that others do the same - after all they say that up to 90% of tone is lost through the process of writing something down.