The Decaen piastre was a coin that Governor Decaen had minted at Île of France in 1810. He entrusted the coining to the artist "sieur Aveline", who designed the coins and whose name appears on them.Spink & Son (January 1901) ''The Numismatic Circular and Catalogue of Coins, Tokens, Commemorative & War Medals, Books & Cabinets'', Vol. 9, №4415. The coins are of 10 livres and dated 1810; they were referred to as

Piastre The piastre or piaster () is any of a number of units of currency. The term originates from the Italian for "thin metal plate". The name was applied to Spanish and Hispanic American pieces of eight, or pesos, by Venice, Venetian traders in the ...

s Decaen. The silver for the coining came from 200 to 230,000

dollar Dollar is the name of more than 20 currencies. They include the Australian dollar, Brunei dollar, Canadian dollar, Hong Kong dollar, Jamaican dollar, Liberian dollar, Namibian dollar, New Taiwan dollar, New Zealand dollar, Singapore dollar, U ...

s that the Portuguese ship ''Ovidor Pereira'' was carrying from

Macao Macau or Macao (; ; ; ), officially the Macao Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (MSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China in the western Pearl River Delta by the South China Sea. With a pop ...

when ''Lieutenant de vaisseau''

Pierre Bouvet Pierre is a masculine given name. It is a French form of the name Peter. Pierre originally meant "rock" or "stone" in French (derived from the Greek word πέτρος (''petros'') meaning "stone, rock", via Latin "petra"). It is a translation ...

of captured her in the

Straits of Malacca The Strait of Malacca is a narrow stretch of water, 500 mi (800 km) long and from 40 to 155 mi (65–250 km) wide, between the Malay Peninsula (Peninsular Malaysia) to the northeast and the Indonesian island of Sumatra to the southwest, connec ...

on 20 October 1809.

References

Currencies of Mauritius Silver coins {{Coin-stub