The Bombardment of Algiers (26-27 August 1816)

Commissioned by the Ministerie van Marine (Department of the Navy), The Hague;¹¹J.M. Obreen, Catalogus der verzameling modellen van het Departement van Marine, The Hague 1858, p. 173. transferred to the museum, 1883

ObjectNumber: SK-A-1395

Painting of ships firing in the night.

In the night of 27 August 1816, a combined Anglo-Dutch fleet of twenty-eight ships under the command of Admiral Edward Pellew, Lord Exmouth (1757-1833) and Vice Admiral Theodorus Frederik van Capellen (1761-1824) bombarded Algiers to back up the ultimatum after previous diplomatic attempts had failed to release more than a thousand Europeans, many of them sailors, who had been enslaved by the Dey of Algiers.²²The Dutch squadron consisted of the 40-gun frigates Melampus (Van Capellen’s flagship), Diana, Frederika Sophia Wilhelmina, Amstel, the 36-gun Dageraad (36 guns) and the 20-gun Eendracht. Van Capellen met Lord Exmouth at Gibraltar on his way home after a cruise in the Mediterranean, but after learning the destination of the impressive battle group under Exmouth’s command he immediately offered his assistance (J.C. Mollema, ‘Het bombardement van Algiers, 27 Augustus 1816’, Jaarverslag Vereeniging Nederlandsch Historisch Scheepvaart Museum te Amsterdam 1937, Amsterdam 1938, pp. 55-64, pp. 57-9). The shot-through flag of the Melampus is in the collection of the Rijksmuseum, inv. no. NG-MC-1195.

Martinus Schouman (1770-1848) painted this work in his Dordrecht studio in 1823 as a commission by the Department of the Navy.³³J.M. Obreen, Catalogus der verzameling modellen van het Departement van Marine, The Hague 1858, p. 172.

J.M. Obreen, Catalogus der verzameling modellen van het Departement van Marine, The Hague 1858, p. 172; J.C. Mollema, ‘Het bombardement van Algiers, 27 Augustus 1816’, Jaarverslag Vereeniging Nederlandsch Historisch Scheepvaart Museum te Amsterdam 1937, Amsterdam 1938, pp. 55-64; P.J.J. van Thiel et al., All the Paintings of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam: A Completely Illustrated Catalogue, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1976, p. 508; C. Northcote Parkinson, Britannia Rules: The Classic Age of Naval History 1793-1815, London 1977; J. Erkelens, ‘Martinus Schouman (1770-1848). Biografie van een Dordtse zeeschilder’, De Negentiende Eeuw 7 (1983), pp. 277-94; A. Lemmers (ed.), Maritime Technology from the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam: Multimedia Catalogue of the Dutch Navy Model Collection 1698-1889, coll. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1995

J. van der Vliet, 2016, 'Martinus Schouman, The Bombardment of Algiers (26-27 August 1816), Dordrecht, 1823', in J. van der Vliet and A. Lemmers (eds.), Navy Models in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5429