Jean-Baptiste Philibert Willaumez

Vice-Admiral Jean-Baptiste Philibert Willaumez (7 August 1763 – 17 May 1845) was a French Navy officer who served in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Willaumez joined the French navy at the age of 14, and proved to be a competent sailor. Having risen to the rank of pilot, he started studying navigation, attracting the attention of his superiors and Louis XVI. Willaumez eventually became an officer and served under Antoine Bruni d'Entrecasteaux in his expedition to find the comte de Lapérouse and explore the Indian Ocean and Oceania.

During the French Revolutionary Wars, Willaumez rose in rank and served in Saint-Domingue during the Haitian Revolution, where he commanded the frigate Poursuivante against the Royal Navy during the action of 28 June 1803. In 1806, Willaumez led a French squadron in the Atlantic campaign of 1806, sailing to Brazil and the West Indies and attacking British merchant shipping. However, Jérôme Bonaparte's insubordination led to Willaumez missing the chance to attack a valuable British convoy. Eventually, the 1806 Great Coastal hurricane damaged and dispersed his squadron, which was either sunk or limped back to France.

In May 1808, Willaumez attempted to regroup warships scattered in Brest, Lorient and Rochefort into an eighteen-ship squadron to defend the French West Indies; adverse weather and the poor state of the squadron thwarted the plan and he ended up being blockaded by the British in Rochefort, leading to a catastrophic defeat at the Battle of the Basque Roads and Willaumez falling out of favour with Napoleon. After the end of the Napoleonic Wars Willaumez served at the Council of Naval Constructions and was granted a peerage. He authored a dictionary of naval terms, sponsored a collection of ship models and commissioned the Roux family to paint portraits of all the ships on which he had served, a collection known as the Album de Willaumez.