Action of 19 February 1801

Action of 19 February 1801
Part of the French Revolutionary Wars
Location of the start of the Action of 19 February 1801
Date 19 February 1801 Location Off Ceuta, Spanish North Africa Result British victory
Belligerents
United Kingdom	French Republic
Commanders and leaders
Captain Robert Barlow	Commodore Saulnier  †
Strength
Frigate HMS Phoebe	Frigate Africaine
Casualties and losses
1 killed, 12 wounded	200 killed, 143 wounded, Africaine captured

The Action of 19 February 1801 was a minor naval battle fought off Ceuta in Spanish North Africa in February 1801 between frigates of the French and Royal Navies during the French Revolutionary Wars. The engagement formed part of a series of actions fought to prevent the French from resupplying their garrison in Egypt, which had been trapped there without significant reinforcement since the defeat of the French Mediterranean Fleet at the Battle of the Nile two and a half years earlier. The leader of the Egyptian expedition, General Napoleon Bonaparte, had returned to France in 1799 and promised aid to the troops left behind, prompting several expeditions to the region carrying reinforcements.

The frigate Africaine had been sent from Rochefort early in 1801 with more than 400 soldiers for the Egyptian garrison, and by February had reached the Mediterranean Sea, Commodore Saulnier seeking to pass along the North African coast to avoid patrolling Royal Navy warships. On the afternoon of 19 February however the overladen French warship was discovered by the British HMS Phoebe and rapidly chased down and brought to action. In an engagement lasting two hours, the French ship was reduced to a wallowing wreck as broadsides from Phoebe tore through the hull, rigging and the soldiers packed on the decks: by the time Africaine surrendered, 200 men were dead and another 143 wounded. The captured ship was brought into the base at Port Mahon in Minorca and subsequently served in the Royal Navy.

In 1798 a large French expeditionary force under General Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Egypt, then under the nominal control of the Ottoman Empire, in an extension of the ongoing French Revolutionary Wars. The fleet that had convoyed the French army was anchored in Aboukir Bay near Alexandria, and was discovered there by a British fleet under Vice-Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson on 1 August. In the ensuing Battle of the Nile the French Mediterranean Fleet was almost totally destroyed, preventing the French forces in Egypt from maintaining regular reinforcement and communication from France and ending the possibility of a wholesale evacuation of the French army. Following an unsuccessful campaign in Syria, Bonaparte returned to France without his army, eventually seizing control of the French government during the events of 18 Brumaire.

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