In my efforts to work out exactly who the Commandant Hamon in the BN3 letter was, I found two recent issues of Outre-Mers filled to the gunwales with Eric Saugera’s somewhat epic archival research into French slaving ships during the tumultuous period 1794-1814.
Saugera has a good-sized section on Captaine Emmanuel-Hypolite le Joliff and his ship the Navigateur. Specifically, he says of Desvaux and Hamon that the first was “le second capitaine“, while the second “devant être un officier de l’État-major“. However, this notion that Hamon was an officer in the General Staff of the military seems (and I might be wrong) to be a presumption on Saugera’s part. So, while I initially got super-excited about this as a new lead on Hamon, I’ve kind of settled down a bit since.
Perhaps more interesting is that in Saugera’s section on l’Ile de France slave ships, he talks specifically about the Apollon. This was a 200-tonne three-master (30 men) that arrived from Brest in 1797 (Cap. Raoul?), going from there to Mozambique on 16 Jun 1802 (Cap. Moignot, maître d’équipage François Roguit). The name appears twice in Toussaint’s Route des Iles, firstly on p.295 for 1797:
…and p.265 for 16 Jun 1802:
This slaver Apollon would seem to be a different ship to the one (Cap. Louis le Vaillant) that was captured by HMS Leopard in 1798, which I once posted the crew list for. In fact, it seems likely to me that this Louis le Vaillant 1798 Apollon (which the famous corsair Jean-Francois Hodoul had received in May 1797 fitted up for privateering) was in fact the same 7 Jan 1797 Apollon with Cap. Raoul listed by Toussaint.
But was this 1802 slaver Apollon the one mentioned in the BN3 letter?
Dans ma vie aventureuse et avant de m’embarquer à bord de l’Apollon, j’ai fait partie du dernier corsaire de ces grand corsaires qui ont fait tant de mal à l’Espagne et à notre ennemie l’Anglais.
Even though the BN3 letter writer is talking about his “adventurous life”, note that he is talking about “before” embarking on the Apollon. So perhaps he flipped (as did Emmanuel-Hypolite le Jollif) from privateer ships to slave ships? But, in all fairness, without crew lists to hand, it’s hard to be 100% sure.
Regardless, this slaver Apollon appears to fit the BN3 timeline fairly well, so I wouldn’t bet against it right now. So… maybe/perhaps/maybe we’re starting to make some progress here (fingers crossed).