Louis Guillouet, comte d'Orvilliers

GUILLOUET Louis, comte d' Orvilliers (* 1708 in Moulins, Algeria, † 1792 ) was a French admiral. D' Orvilliers spent most of his childhood in Cayenne, capital of the French colony of French Guiana, where his father was governor. In 1723, when he was fifteen years old, he became a member of the infantry regiment of the colony and was promoted very quickly to lieutenant. In 1728 he had himself transferred to the Navy. 1756, when he already had a captain's license, he commanded one of the ships that were sent under the direction of Roland -Michel Barrin de La Galissonière to Menorca. He was later involved in military operations in the vicinity of Santo Domingo and the Antilles, and was in 1764 promoted to Vice Admiral.

1777 France began the American colonies in their quest for independence from Great Britain to support. D' Orvilliers was appointed Lieutenant General of the Navy and should intercept the British Navy in the Atlantic Ocean. His biggest success was a naval battle on July 27, 1778 off the Brittany coast (First naval battle in Ouessant ), when he managed to stop the attack of a British squadron under Admiral Augustus Keppel. The following year, however, he failed to take the British port towns of Portsmouth and Plymouth. Although this is essentially the weather and illness among the wave sailors were responsible, he was criticized for it. He thereupon brought down his command. After the death of his wife, he lived first in Paris. He later returned to his birthplace Moulins, where he died in 1792.

Descendants

Among his descendants is one Hugues Duroy de Chaumareys, one of the most notorious captains of the French sailing ship time. De Chaumareys completed part of his training under his older relatives and did not last because of the relationship with him career. After the French Revolution, he never commanded a ship again, however, to him in 1816, the new Bourbon government commissioned in order to conduct a convoy from Rochefort to Saint Louis. It came because of the incompetence of the captain of the frigate for beaching Méduse, in which had to rescue on a makeshift raft cobbled together among other 157 passengers and crew members. Chaumareys it admitted that this control incompetent and not sufficiently supplied with food and water raft was left to his fate, which led to the deaths of 140 passengers.