Perhaps Commandant Hamon was a surgeon?

A while back, I noted that H. C. M. Austen mentioned (“Sea Fights and Corsairs of the Indian Ocean”, p.79) a ship’s surgeon called Hamon from 1796. This was on a pilot brig which the famous corsair Robert Surcouf had captured and renamed the Cartier on 28 Jan 1796: while Surcouf and the rest of his (small) crew had boarded the Diana, the ship’s Malouin surgeon (Hamon) and cook had stayed behind, shooting across at the Diana to help convince them that Surcouf’s Cartier had a much larger crew.

This story was most famously recounted in Charles Cunat’s often breathless “Histoire de Robert Surcouf, Capitaine de Corsaire” (p.52), though modern historians such as Alain Romain prefer to rely on Captain Tapson’s account of the same attack that appeared in the Calcutta Gazette.

Even though Surcouf was extraordinarily successfully, his ways of going about things drew sharp criticism (e.g. from Decaen) and his substantial corsairing prizes were initially withheld from him. However, after appeals to authorities in France, this was reversed: but part of this involved a letter being sent by many of the French crew recounting what happened. This letter dated 15 Vend. Ann. IV appears in Cunat (p.43), and includes a list of signatories: R. Surcouf, H. Hamon, Bourgoin, J. Croize, etc. So it seems almost certain that the ship’s surgeon’s first name began with H (e.g. Henri, Henri-Marie, etc), which is helpful.

But the reason I’m flagging this is that my last post briefly mentioned Emmanuel Hypolite le Joliff, captain of the slaver ship the Navigateur, which ferried slaves from Mozambique to Ile de France. I had a feeling I’d seen this name before but couldn’t think where: but it was on Capitaine le Joliff’s Navigateur that Robert Surcouf was famously the Lieutenant from 27 Aug 1792 to 17 Mar 1794.

Toussaint’s Les Freres Surcouf mentions two specific slave runs from Surcouf’s time on the Navigateur (though there were doubtless many others after that, including the one with the 1803 mutiny where two slaves owned by Messers Desveaux and Hamon were lost, presumed jumped overboard):

• 10 May 1793 -> Mozambique, returned 25 Sep 1793 with 362 slaves
• 10 Dec 1793 -> Mozambique, returned 04 Mar 1794 with 360 slaves

It would therefore surely not be a surprise if the Commandant Hamon mentioned in the BN3 letter was also the same H. Hamon who had served under Robert Surcouf in 1796. This might well explain his kindly ministrations to the letter-writer: “[…] je suis malade depuis la prise de Tamatave, malgré les soins de mon commandant et ami.” Though I’d need persuading about ship’s surgeons’ bedside manners: “Anyone lost any limbs? Hands? Feet? Eyes? No-one? OK, jolly good, if you need me, I’ll be dining with the Captain“.

Incidentally, a search of Gallica threw up a reference in “La medecine et les medicins a Saint-Malo, 1500-1820” by Dr H. Hervot (p. 219) to “Hamon, chirurgien navigant de Saint-Ideuc” in the proceedings of a St-Malo medical society dated 24 Oct 1791. Given that we know from Cunat that the Hamon on the Cartier was a ship’s surgeon from Saint-Malo (the famous “Corsair City”, and Surcouf’s and le Joliff’s home town), this could very easily be the same person.

Where Next?

I suspect Hamon’s full name will appear in one or more Mauritian crew lists from this time (though none of the ones I have here), and possibly also in records in the Saint-Malo archives and/or in Gallica. I’ve also looked in various other Surcouf-themed books but without any luck. But even so, I think it’s starting to feel as though these different research threads may well be converging on a single person.