By the autumn of 1809, Guadeloupe was the last French colony standing in the Caribbean. The Royal Navy had picked off the others one by one: Martinique in February, the outlying islands through spring and summer, a reinforcement squadron ambushed near the Iles des Saintes in April. British blockade ships intercepted everything coming to or from the island, strangling trade, starving the garrison, and cutting Guadeloupe off from the rest of the French Empire. Into this tightening noose, the French government sent Commodore Dominique Roquebert with four ships, two frigates and two supply flutes, carrying food and more than four hundred soldiers. It was a gamble. Within a week, both supply ships would be burning wrecks in a Guadeloupean cove, and Guadeloupe's last hope of reinforcement would be gone.
The expedition departed Nantes on November 15, 1809, carefully assembled after months of preparation. The two flutes, Loire under Lieutenant Joseph Normand-Kergre and Seine under Lieutenant Bernard Vincent, carried large quantities of food supplies and over two hundred military reinforcements each. Escorting them were the 40-gun frigates Renommee, Roquebert's flagship, and Clorinde under Captain Jacques Saint-Cricq. The convoy made rapid progress across the Atlantic, avoiding every British patrol. But smaller supply ships dispatched around the same time were not so lucky. Every one of them was intercepted in the western Atlantic by warships that Vice-Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane had positioned precisely for this purpose. The British knew a French resupply effort was coming. They were waiting.
On December 13, the French squadron encountered HMS Junon, a British frigate patrolling east of Antigua in the company of the 16-gun brig HMS Observateur. Junon's captain did not realize the size of the force bearing down on him until it was too late. As Renommee engaged from one side and Clorinde attacked from the other, the two flutes positioned themselves fore and aft, repeatedly raking the British ship with gunfire. The French ships closed so near that soldiers aboard, bound for the Guadeloupe garrison, fired their muskets down onto Junon's deck, killing sailors at their guns. Junon fought fiercely but was overwhelmed and captured, her captain mortally wounded. The small Observateur, recognizing the hopelessness of the fight, slipped away westward. That decision would prove decisive.
Roquebert made a fateful choice after destroying the crippled Junon. He delivered his two flutes to within sight of Guadeloupe and then turned his frigates toward France, leaving Loire and Seine to complete the final approach unescorted. Meanwhile, Observateur raced to the British blockade squadron at Basse-Terre. Captain Frederick Wetherall delivered the warning on December 15, and Captain Volant Vashon Ballard in HMS Blonde swiftly gathered his ships. When the French flutes appeared off Basse-Terre on December 17, Ballard blocked their path. Retreating along the southern coastline, Normand-Kergre and Vincent anchored in a sheltered cove called Anse la Barque, positioning their ships broadside to the entrance with shore batteries on either flank. It was the strongest defensive position available, but it was also a trap.
On the morning of December 18, a French boat sailed out offering a truce. The British ignored it. HMS Sceptre, a 74-gun ship of the line, had arrived from Martinique under Captain Samuel James Ballard, and the assembled British force now vastly outgunned the two anchored flutes. Frigates entered the bay while smaller vessels engaged the shore batteries. Within an hour, both French ships surrendered. But the fighting had started fires that no one could control. At 5:20 PM, flames reached the powder magazine of one flute, and the explosion hurled burning wreckage across the bay. A flaming timber struck the second ship's mainmast, igniting it as well. Both vessels were destroyed in succession. Most of the French crews escaped ashore from the burning wrecks, but the supplies they had carried across the Atlantic, the food and reinforcements that were Guadeloupe's lifeline, were gone.
Roquebert's frigates, having abandoned the supply ships, turned north and nearly ran aground on a sandbar off Antigua while fleeing the British squadron they spotted in the distance. By throwing their guns and stores overboard, they lightened their ships enough to float free and eventually reached France. The failure of the resupply mission broke whatever remained of Guadeloupe's morale. Additional small supply vessels were captured in the days surrounding the main engagement: the brig Bearnais on December 14, Papillion on December 19. In January 1810, the blockade tightened further. A month after Anse la Barque, a coordinated British invasion force captured Guadeloupe, ending French control of the Caribbean. Roquebert himself would be killed in action less than two years later, ambushed off Madagascar during another doomed resupply mission to a colony that had already fallen.
Anse la Barque, where the French supply ships were destroyed, is on the southwestern coast of Basse-Terre, Guadeloupe, near 16.24N, 61.32W. The bay is a small indentation visible from altitude along the rugged coastline. The nearest airport is Basse-Terre's Baillif airstrip, though the main airport for Guadeloupe is Pointe-a-Pitre Le Raizet (TFFR), approximately 30 nautical miles to the northeast. From 3,000-5,000 feet, the butterfly shape of Guadeloupe is clearly visible, with the mountainous volcanic Basse-Terre to the west and the flat limestone Grande-Terre to the east. The Iles des Saintes, where an earlier French squadron was defeated, are visible to the south.