THORNBROUGH

Thornbrough was a long-serving veteran officer of the Royal Navy during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. He saw action in the American Revolutionary War, the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars, being wounded several times and once captured by American forces after a shipwreck. During the wreck, his conduct towards American prisoners aboard his ship was considered so exemplary that the American authorities later released him without parole or exchange.HMS Jalouse was a Cormorant-class ship-sloop of the British Royal Navy launched in 1809 and sold in 1819.During the Napoleonic Wars, Isle de France (Mauritius) became a base from which the French navy organised raids on British merchant ships. The raids continued until 1810 when the British sent a strong expedition to capture the island. The first British attempt, in August 1810, to attack Grand Port resulted in a French victory, one celebrated on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. A subsequent and much larger attack launched in December of the same year from Rodrigues, which had been captured a year earlier, was successful. The British landed in large numbers in the north of the island and rapidly overpowered the French, who capitulated.HMS Trent was a fifth-rate sailing frigate of 36 guns, built for the Royal Navy and launched in February 1796. In 1803, Trent sailed for Jamaica under a new captain, Charles Brisbane. Trent returned to home waters in June to be recommissioned under Commander Walter Grosset and fitted as a hospital ship at Plymouth. The work took until August. Trent was then dispatched to Cork where she served as flagship to successive commanders-in-chief on the Coast of Ireland Station. She was commissioned twice more, under Commander Thomas Young in 1811 and Commander G. Lampriere in 1813 but remained a hospital ship and flagship at Cork until 1815.