Welcome in, everyone. It is so great to have
you sitting down with us today. Absolutely. It's
great to be here. So if you are anything like
me, you love a good historical mystery, especially
when it turns out to be, you know, a little bit
absurd. Those are always the best kind. Right.
So for today's deep dive, our source material
is actually just a single Wikipedia article.
Which sounds completely crazy, I know. It does.
But do not let that fool you. This article details
the history of ships named Poisson Volant. Which
is French for flying fish. Exactly. And our mission
today is to explore the completely chaotic, almost
comical history of French... privateers operating
under this wildly popular name between the year
1760 and 1814. This is a very specific window
of time. It is. We're going to track down stolen
ships, thrown guns, and what has to be the most
confusing maritime identity crisis in history.
Let's unpack this, because before we start throwing
around dates and ship names, I need to understand
the rules of the game here. When we talk about
these vessels, were these actual French Navy
ships or something else entirely? What's fascinating
here is... Well, it's the crucial distinction
between a formal commissioned naval warship and
a privateer. If you were sailing in a national
navy, you were a uniformed military vessel following
very strict governmental hierarchies. But a privateer
was essentially a state -sanctioned pirate. Wait,
state sanctioned? Right. Governments would issue
official documents granting private ship owners
the legal right to attack and capture enemy merchant
vessels. It was purely a for -profit enterprise
masquerading as warfare. So they were just in
it for the money. Completely. You equipped a
ship, hired a crew, and went out hunting for
prizes. If you succeeded, you and your crew got
a cut of the profits when the captured ship and
its cargo were sold at auction. And if you failed?
You went bankrupt or ended up freezing in a British
prison. And for some inexplicable reason, the
name Poisson Volant, the flying fish, became
the trendy go -to name for these French opportunists.
So it was essentially the 18th century equivalent
of naming your tech startup with a missing vowel.
Everyone just copied the trend, so let's get
right into the timeline. The earliest sighting
in our source document takes us to April of 1760.
Right. The British frigate, A .G .M .S. Levant,
is on patrol over in the Caribbean. They spot
an eight -gun French privateer named Poisson
-Follant to capture it and deliver the vessel
and her crew to the British authorities in the
Lourdes Islands. A pretty standard capture. Yeah,
but when I read eight -gun ship, my mind immediately
goes to these giant floating wooden fortresses
from the movies. Yeah. But that's not what this
was, is it? Not at all. We really have to scale
down our imagination here. An eight -gun privateer
was likely a small, incredibly cramped vessel,
maybe roughly the size of a modern luxury yacht.
Without the luxury. Entirely lacking the luxury.
I mean, you are cramming... dozens of men onto
this tiny deck, along with eight heavy iron cannons,
gunpowder, provisions, water. It was smelly,
claustrophobic, and built entirely for speed
over firepower. Wow. They weren't looking to
fight the Royal Navy. They were looking to terrorize
slow, unarmed merchant ships. That paints a much
grimier picture. And sometimes, even that strategy
failed miserably. Oh, absolutely. Fast forward
to December 10th, 1782. The story of this particular
Poisson Volant, is actually a little bit pathetic.
It really is. They are just three days out of
the port of Dunkirk. They have captured absolutely
nothing. Zero prizes. Nothing at all. And they
are summarily sunk right off the coast of Portland
by a ship named Speedwell. Commanded by Captain
Wesson. Right. And the surviving French crew
just washes up in Weymouth. It's a remarkably
short and unsuccessful career. It is a very short
career. But from a historical and analytical
standpoint, the identity of the ship that sank
them is incredibly revealing. How so? Well, the
source notes that this Speedwell was likely a
humble customs revenue cutter, not the mighty
warship. HMS Speedwell. Okay, what's a cutter?
To picture a cutter, imagine a small, single
-masted boat built with a very sharp bow to slice
through the waves. They were essentially the
maritime border patrol of their day, tasked with
catching smugglers. And we know this wasn't the
actual warship HMS Speedwell because that vessel
was incredibly busy down in Gibraltar under the
command of a Lieutenant Gibson at that exact
time. So basically... Heavily armed tax collectors
were taking down these privateers while the actual
Royal Navy was busy elsewhere. Precisely. And
for you listening, this highlights exactly why
precise naval record keeping matters so much
when piecing history together. Right. Because
names get duplicated. Exactly. If historians
just saw a ledger entry saying Speedwell sunk
a ship, they might attribute a massive naval
victory to the wrong vessel. Distinguishing between
a local customs boat and a commissioned warship
changes the entire context of the engagement.
It totally rewrites the story. It shows that
these privateers weren't always going up against
the titans of the Royal Navy. Sometimes they
were getting bested by the local Coast Guard.
Which speaks volumes about how chaotic this whole
era was. And that chaos just keeps escalating.
It really does. In 1795 alone, we see a flurry
of these captures across the globe. In June of
that year, HMS Weasel and HMS Phaeton team up
to capture a 10 -gun Poisson Volante right in
the English Channel. Then, just a few months
later, on September 30th, HMS Success captures
a brig named Poisson Volante all the way over
on the Jamaica Station. And just to clarify the
terminology for the listener, a brig is a two
-masted vessel that is square -rigged. Meaning?
Meaning the sails hang across the ship rather
than along its length. Brigs required a larger
crew to manage all that rigging, but they were
sturdy, agile, and functioned like miniature
warships. But you touched on the real issue there,
geographical spread. Right, because we've got
flying fishes popping up in Europe and flying
fishes popping up in the Caribbean simultaneously.
Imagine being an admiralty clerk in London. You
are receiving dispatch after dispatch from different
oceans, all reporting the capture of the Poisson
Blanc. It would be a nightmare. They were likely
pulling their hair out, trying to figure out
how one ship was seemingly in two oceans at once,
before the reality set in that they were just
dealing with a wildly overused, unoriginal name.
Well, hold on to that thought about the... Poor
admiralty clerks. Here's where it gets really
interesting. The identity crisis is about to
reach a whole new level of ridiculousness. Oh,
yes. Let's rewind slightly to that same month,
June 1795. A British ship named HMS Flying Fish
is en route to Jamaica when it gets attacked
and captured by two French privateers. Which
is a significant loss for the British, losing
a named vessel to the enemy. Keep that loss in
the back of your mind as we move forward to May
4, 1796. We have three British ships sailing
together. HMS Esperance, HMS Spencer, and HMS
Bonetta. A solid little fleet. Right. They are
scanning the horizon, and suddenly they spot
some suspicious sails. The fleet immediately
splits up to give chase. Dang it, protocol. HMS
Spencer breaks off, heading south -southeast,
and eventually runs down and captures a French
gun brig called Vulcan. Meanwhile, Esperance
and Bonetta take a different trajectory. They
head southwest by west. Exactly. And they chase
down a schooner that was sailing from OK -2 to
New York. This is a classic naval pincer movement.
You divide your forces to secure multiple targets
so they can't scatter. And it's worth noting
that a schooner, unlike the square -rigged brig
we mentioned earlier, is fore -and -aft rigged.
So the sails are different. Yes, the sails run
parallel to the length of the ship. This makes
schooners incredibly maneuverable, especially
when sailing upwind, which is the perfect design
for a ship trying to escape capture. Well...
Their escape plan didn't work. Esperance and
Bonetta finally catch this fast schooner and
board it. And guess what the French crew calls
their ship? The Poisson Volant. The Poisson Volant.
But wait, the plot twist. The British sailors
are looking around this captured French schooner,
taking inventory, and they start recognizing
the architecture. It's all too familiar. It turns
out this French privateer Poisson Volant is actually
the HMS Flying Fish that the French had captured
the previous year. The audacity is just remarkable.
The French captured a British ship named Flying
Fish, literally translated the name into French
to call it Poisson Volant, and sent it back out
to sea to fight the British. That's unbelievable.
But looking closely at the source text about
this specific chase, we see just how terrifying
the pursuit actually was. Yeah, let's get into
that. This captured vessel was commanded by a
sub -lieutenant who had come over from another
French ship, the Concorde, just eight or ten
days prior. And he had a crew of 38 men. During
the pursuit by the British, this French crew
actually cut down their own gunnels. The edges
of the ship? The upper edges of the ship's sides,
right. And they threw their own cannons overboard.
I cannot even fathom the sheer panic required
to do that. Yeah. You have to be absolutely terrified
to start swinging axes and dismantling your own
ship while you're actively sailing it. It speaks
perfectly to the physics of 18th century naval
pursuits. Weight was everything. If a larger,
heavily armed British warship was bearing down
on you, your only defense as a privateer was
speed. Just run away. Exactly. Every single pound
mattered. Heaving heavy iron cannons into the
ocean would instantly lift the hull slightly
higher in the water, reducing drag. Chopping
down the wooden gunnels reduced topside weight.
So they were stripping the car while driving.
It was a desperate calculation. Sacrifice your
ability to defend yourself in order to maximize
your chance to flee. It wasn't just a statistic
on a page. It was frantic men sweating and fighting
against physics to survive. And in this case,
it wasn't enough. No, but it shows just how high
the stakes were. It brings such a visceral reality
to the timeline. But you would think the French
might realize this name was becoming a liability.
Instead, we move into the 1797, which I can only
describe as the peak whack -a -mole year for
the British Navy. It really was. Early in the
year, HMS Magicien captures not one, but two
entirely different privateers named Poisson -Vollant.
Within a single month. Incredible. On January
13th, they catch one with 12 guns and 80 men.
Then on February 16th, they catch a completely
different one with five guns and 50 men. And
to make it even more confusing, one of these
wasn't even French. Right. It was Dutch. A Dutch
privateer operating out of Curacao. If we connect
this to the bigger picture, it really highlights
how the privateering industry transcended borders,
colonies, and nationalities. It wasn't just a
French phenomenon. The Dutch were engaged in
it. And as we'll see, the Americans built ships
for it. So it was global enterprise? Absolutely.
The name Flying Fish had clearly become synonymous
with speed and agility across the entire maritime
world. It was essentially an international brand
name. Like a franchise. Pretty much. If you were
seeking investors for your new privateering venture,
pitching it as the Croissant Volant probably
sounded like a safe bet to guarantee returns.
A safe bet that practically guaranteed a British
warship was going to hunt you down. Which leads
me to the funniest anecdote of this entire deep
dive. It is April 4th, 1797. I love this one.
HMS Tamar, commanded by Captain Sir Thomas Byam
Martin, is diligently escorting a convoy of ships
from Barbados to Martinique. They encounter a
four -gun French privateer out of Guadeloupe,
manned by a crew of 40. And let me guess the
name. You guessed it. HMS Tamar captures it and
brings it into Martinique. But the punchline
here, which is provided by Captain Martin's own
biography, is that HMS Tamar had already captured
this exact same ship earlier that same year.
Which is just wild. How does a ship just walk
away from being captured only to get caught by
the exact same guy a few months later? It sounds
completely fabricated, but it is a perfect illustration
of the bizarre circular economy of privateering
during this era. Let's walk through how this
actually happened because it was a highly bureaucratic
process. Okay. Lay it out for us. When HMS Tamar
captured the ship the first time, they didn't
just sink it. They sent her into Antigua. In
Antigua, a British prize court officially condemned
the ship. And condemned in this context doesn't
mean they declared it unfit to sail, right? Correct.
In naval terms, condemnation is the legal process
of declaring a ship a lawful capture of war.
Once condemned, the ship was put up for public
auction and sold as a prize to the highest bidder,
with the prize money distributed to the British
crew that captured it. So it's essentially a
maritime police auction. Exactly. And in this
case, the buyers sailed their newly purchased
ship to a neutral island. There, a company of
speculators essentially the venture capitalists
of the 18th century, bought the ship. Oh, no.
They then sailed it right back to French -controlled
Guadeloupe, got a brand new privateering commission
from the local government, hired a new crew,
and sent it right back into the war zone to attack
British shipping. Only for it to blunder straight
into the exact same British warship that had
captured it months earlier. It was an endless
loop of capture, auction, and recommissioning.
The sigh that Captain Martin must have let out
when he looked through his spyglass and saw that
same ship again. You just know he was thinking,
didn't I literally just sell you? He had to be
exhausted by it. Hilarious. But the sheer volume
of these ships in the summer of 1797 is just
staggering. Instead of isolated incidents, we
see a rapid fire string of captures that shows
the incredible variety of these vessels. Yes,
they weren't all the same type of ship. Exactly.
On June 5th, that revenue cutter, Lively, nabs
a tiny 12 -ton Pras -en -Volant from Nantes right
off the Isle of Wight. It only had two swivel
guns and 25 men. To give you a sense of scale,
a 12 -ton ship is minuscule. Think of something
roughly the size of a large modern delivery van
floating on the water. That is incredibly small.
And swivel guns aren't the massive cannons on
wooden wheels you see in movies. They were smaller
anti -personnel weapons mounted on pivots along
the ship's rails, almost like oversized shotguns
used to clear an enemy deck before boarding.
And the customs officer who caught them, a Mr.
Dubois Smith, noted for the record that they
hadn't taken a single prize. Not surprising for
a ship that size. Right. And then just a few
weeks later, on June 27th, HMS Trent catches
a brand new lugger out of Havre de Grace over
near Yarmouth. A lugger is yet another distinct
type of vessel. They use distinctive asymmetrical
four -sided sails called lug sails. They were
heavily favored by smugglers because they offered
incredible bursts of raw speed across short distances
like the English Channel. Well, their speed didn't
save them. But the source notes something really
strange about this specific lugger. It had a
crew of 50 men, but 28 of them were missing.
More than half the crew. Right. They were reportedly
away manning a brig and a ship. that the Poisson
Volant had taken as prizes earlier. Wait, why
is a privateer sailing around a war zone with
more than half its crew missing? That is the
great vulnerability of a successful privateer.
When you capture an enemy merchant ship, you
can't just tie a rope to it and tow it. You have
to put your own men, a prize crew, on board to
sail the captured vessel back to a friendly port
to be sold. Oh, so you're dividing your workforce.
Exactly. Every time you win an engagement, you
weaken your own ship by depleting your crew.
This brand new Poisson Volant was highly successful
initially, taking two prizes. But that success
left them severely undermanned. So when HMS Trent
finally caught up with them, they threw their
14 guns overboard to escape. But without enough
men to effectively work the sails or fight, their
fate was sealed. So they were literally victims
of their own success. And the variety of these
ships just continues. On July 24th of that same
summer, HMS Concorde captures a four -gun Croissant
Volant off Cape Finisterre. But this one was
a little different. It was commanded by a Captain
Letart, and it was carrying a massive cargo of
Bordeaux wines to Guadeloupe. This is a crucial
distinction in the maritime law of the era. Captain
Letart's ship was not a pure privateer. It was
operating under a letter of marque. How is that
different? While the terms are often used interchangeably
today, historically, a letter of marque was a
document given to a merchant vessel. Their primary
mission was commercial, in this case, delivering
valuable Bordeaux wine to the colonies. So they
were delivery drivers. Delivery drivers with
a license to hunt. The letter of marque simply
gave them the legal right to capture any enemy
ships they might happen to encounter along the
way. Letart's actual business plan was to deliver
the wine first, get paid, and only then use his
empty ship to cruise as a dedicated privateer
in the West Indies. It was a side hustle. He
was going to deliver the wine, then do a little
light piracy on the weekends. In a manner of
speaking, yes, but it was a very capable ship.
Captain Roberts of the Concorde made a pointed
note in his report. He stated that this Poisson
Volant was actually faster in light winds than
his own warship. Wow. He believed it could have
done considerable mischief if they hadn't managed
to catch it while it was still under the reach
of the Concorde's guns. These stories of near
misses and missing crews are fascinating. But
we do need to look at the darker side of this
history. Because our source material also forces
us to confront the real human cost. Yes, it wasn't
a game. It wasn't all just throwing cannons overboard
and outrunning the Coast Guard. Let's look at
April 9, 1801. A hired armed cutter named Stagg
is south of Beachy Head when she sights a lugger
and a brig. A very familiar scenario. The Stagg
gives chase for an hour and a half and eventually
captures both. The lugger is a French privateer
out of Boulogne named Poisson -Voulon, commanded
by a citizen Jacques -Antoine Head. Now, Citizen
Head had been a busy man. On a previous cruise,
he had captured six vessels. So he was experienced.
Very. And in this engagement with the stag, Head
doesn't just surrender immediately. He fights.
And before he finally strikes his colors, two
of his men are killed and four wounded. And just
to clarify, striking his colors literally means
the physical act of hauling down the ship's flag
to signal a formal surrender and stop the slaughter.
But this raises an important question for you,
the listener, as you process this history. It
is very easy to get swept up in the romanticism
of the era, the almost comical repetition of
the names and the bureaucratic absurdity of the
prize courts. But we must remember the deadly
reality of these skirmishes. People were dying.
Picture the scene. Cannonballs splintering the
wooden decks into lethal shrapnel. Close quarters
musket fire. The utter lack of modern medical
care. Two men died on that deck. Four suffered
likely horrific wounds. This wasn't a gentleman's
game of maritime tag. It was a bloody high stakes
business driven by greed, nationalism and desperation.
The name Poisson Ballant might sound light and
whimsical, but the men sailing under it were
engaged in lethal combat. That grounds the whole
story in reality. Behind every one of these ledger
entries is a very real, very dangerous human
experience. But as we bring our timeline to a
close, the universe seems to insist on one final
moment of absolute irony. It really is perfect.
We move to mid -1803. A massive British squadron,
we're talking major warships here, Cumberland,
Hercule, Bellerophon, Elephant, and Vanguard,
all under the command of Captain Henry William
Bainton. An overwhelming force. Truly. And this
massive force surrounds and captures a 12 -gun
Poisson Volant. And this final capture ties the
entire narrative together so perfectly. This
last Poisson Volant wasn't even French -built.
It was a sleek, fast, American -built schooner
that the French had somehow acquired and were
using as a privateer. And what did the British
do upon capturing this fast, American -built,
French -sailed ship named Flying Fish? They officially
commissioned her right back into the Royal Navy,
her new name. HMS Flying Fish. They literally
translated right back. The French stole HMS Flying
Fish and named it Poisson Volant. And years later,
the British capture an American -built Poisson
Volant and name it HMS Flying Fish. The historical
loop closes perfectly. So what does this all
mean? We started with this single Wikipedia article
and uncovered a world where it seemed like half
the French coastline was trying to cram onto
ships. named the Flying Fish. It was a crowded
sea. We saw vessels stolen, renamed, captured,
sold at auction to venture capitalists, and sent
right back out to fight the very people who sold
them. We saw frantic crews sawing their own ships
apart to escape, and we saw the very fatal consequences
of this chaotic oceanic free -for -all. For you
listening to this, I think there's a profound
parallel here to our modern world. Think about
the chaotic information environment of the 18th
century seas that we just described. British
admirals were bombarded with overlapping data,
duplicate names and contradictory reports from
different oceans, struggling to figure out who
was who and what was actually happening. It sounds
like my inbox. Exactly. Does that feeling of
information overload, of overlapping and confusing
data feel familiar to you today? Whether you
are navigating your own field of study, managing
a massive project at work, or just reading the
morning news, we often face our own fleet of
poissons volants. Multiple things demanding our
attention, all looking the exact same, all requiring
us to dig much deeper to find the actual truth
beneath the surface. We are all just trying to
figure out which flying fish is which. Exactly.
As we wrap up this deep dive, I want to leave
you with one final provocative thought to mull
over on your own. We've talked about the tactical
and economic reasons these ships were out there,
but put yourself in the shoes of an 18th century
sailor for a second. A very dangerous job. These
were deeply superstitious people. If you were
heading out to sea in the... year 1800. Knowing
full well the history we just discussed, would
naming your ship the Flying Fish be considered
a powerful omen of incredible speed and luck?
Or a massive target. Exactly. Given how many
of them ended up captured, sunk, or sold at auction,
would it be viewed as a cursed target, practically
begging the British Navy to hunt you down? It
really makes you wonder about the psychology
of the men painting that name on the hull one
more time. Thank you so much for joining us on
this deep dive. We will catch you on the next
one.