Jacques Cassard

See also: Cassard

Jacques Cassard , intrepid French sailor, born with Nantes in 1672, died in Ham (Somme) in 1740.

It made with great successes the race against the Britanniques in the Manche, under Louis XIV, protected several convoys from corn during the famine of 1709, and rose by its only value with the rank of captain.

Rene Duguay-Trouin looked it like the first of our sailors. Nevertheless, its services were ignored, and he was imprisoned at the height Ham to be itself felt sorry for highly of an injustice.

Ordering in 1705 the corvette Holy Guillaume , it held to ransom the August 28th the town of Cork in Ireland and made twelve catches. In 1707, with the Duchesse Anne , it hails 13 enemy buildings and destroys a corsair of Jersey, which was worth to him a gratification of the king and a patent of lieutenant of frigate. In 1708, a new campaign leads to new captures and the setting out of combat of a ship of 38 guns.

Cassard was then charged by the Secretary of State Pontchartrain with protecting the convoys from corn coming from Tunisia which were to save Provence of the famine. The April 29th 1709, it attacks and puts in escape five British vessels in front of Tabarka and brings back to Marseilles a convoy of 25 ships.

In 1710, it frees with the Golfe Juan 84 buildings coming from Smyrna and the fact of entering to Toulon after having taken two British vessels. The following year, Cassard made a success of a new brilliant operation: sweeping a British cruising, it inserted forty-three ships charged with supply in the port of Peniscola in Spain and thus ensured the maintenance of the army ordered by Vendôme.

During twenty-seven month (1712 - 1714), Cassard, promoted captain in November 1712, will operate raids devastators which will cause with the enemies of enormous losses evaluated with more than 30 million. After having tackled and having held to ransom the Portuguese establishments of the islands of the Cape Verde, it passed to the Antilles and successively carried its offensive on British Isles of Montserrat and Antigua, then on the Dutch colonies of Saint-Eustace, Surinam, Paramaribo and Curaçao, requiring ransoms and destroying all the fortifications.

Partial source

See too

Philippe Hrodej, Jacques Cassard - Ship-owner and corsair of the Sun king , Rennes: university Presses of Rennes, coll History), 2002, ISBN 2-86847-657-0
the anti-aircraft frigate Cassard - D614

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