I’m delighted to be able to report that I have received (from the very nice people at the Musée de la Légion d’Honneur) the page of the original Légion d’Honneur register that I’ve been trying to reconstruct. Or rather, a PDF scan of a microfiche of a handwritten copy of the handwritten original: but you get the basic idea.
Musée de la Légion d’honneur
To be precise, both pages appear here courtesy of: Archives du Musée de la Légion d’honneur et des ordres de chevalerie, ampliation de décret de nomination de chevaliers de la Légion d’honneur du 20 décembre 1810 – i.e. it is a duplicate of the decree dated 20th December 1810 nominating a number of knights for induction into the Légion d’Honneur, held by the Archives du Musée de la Légion d’honneur et des ordres de chevalerie.
The first page has Baron Jean-Jacques-Emmanuel Hamelin and Baron Duperré:
The second page has all the rest, including all the first names that were missing from the Journal de Paris summary that I uncovered a fortnight ago:
Capitaine de vaisseau:
28302 René Constant Le Marant de Kerdaniel (LH/1576/58)
28303 Pierre François Henry Étienne Bouvet de Maisonneuve (LH/342/61)
Capitaine de frégate:
28304 Nicolas Morice (LH/1937/17)
28305 Alexandre Louis Ducrest de Villeneuve (LH/827/53)
28306 Albin Roussin (LH/2407/38)
28307 Thomas Julien Fougeray du Coudray (LH/1007/55)
Chef de bataillon d’artillerie de marine:
28308 Etienne-Elisabeth Mourgues (LH/1955/28) (1774-1833)
Lieutenant de vaisseau:
28309 Henri-Félix Moisson (LH/1896/27) (1784-1832)
28310 François-Auguste Costé (LH/598/79) (1770-????)
28311 Bonaventure Thirot (LH/2595/10) (1781-1850)
28312 Edouard Victor Longueville (LH/1657/4) (1784-1862)
28313 René Decaen (LH/403/27)
Capitaine des chasseurs des colonies:
28314 Duplessis
Enseigne de vaisseau:
28315 Michel-Joseph-Guillaume de Rabaudy (LH/2252/38) (1784-1837)
Lieutenant de vaisseau:
28316 Camille Joseph de Roquefeuille-Cahuzac (1781-1831)
Enseigne de vaisseau:
28317 Isaïe Alexis de Longueville (LH/1657/8) (1788-1838)
28318 Auguste-Alexandre Mauclerc (~1767-1835)
28319 Joachim Vieillard (1782-1821)
28320 Vincent-Marie Moulac (LH/1949/55) (1778/1780-1836)
28321 Robert-Nicolas Lefébure (LH/1548/23) (1788-????)
28322 Jean-Baptiste Jardin (LH/1354/77) (1788-????)
Capitaine d’artillerie de Marine:
28323 Ackman
Aspirant de 1ère classe:
28324 Louis Augustin Médéric Malavoie (1793-1836)
So… Which One Is The Missing Corsair, Then?
Someone like Camille Joseph de Roquefeuille-Cahuzac would be an excellent candidate, were it not for the awkward fact that he seems not to have had a brother called Etienne.
Joachim Vieillard at first looks like a plausible fit for the “Joachim Joseph, portuguais” on the Apollon. However, if you search Memoires des Hommes, you’ll find Joachim Joseph and his (possibly twin?) brother Isydor / Ignace as ‘mousses’ (very young sailors) on the Bonhomme Richard two years before Joachim Vieillard was even born. (An older man by the same name – quite possibly their father – was killed on the same ship).
Louis Augustin Médéric Malavoie would also be a good candidate, were he not too young to have sailed on the Apollon. And so it goes on.
In retrospect, my initial hope (that all we would need to do is cross-reference this list of names and the list of names on the Apollon crew-list, and verify the result by finding a brother called Etienne) seems slightly over-optimistic.
However, there are plenty more dice to roll before this game of archival chance is over. For example:
* there may be a second list of the Apollon’s captured crew in British archives
* there may be lists of corsair Freemasons in Ile de Bourbon and/or Ile de France
* there may be other Indian Ocean Freemason archives to go through
* the crew list of La Vénus (in Mauritius) might tell us more
* and so on.