Action of 20 October 1793

Two warships exchange fire on a choppy sea. The left ship flies a white flag with a red cross and the right one a red, white and blue tricolour. Both ships are badly damaged, particularly in their sails and rigging.

Capture of the French ship Réunion by the Crescent, 1793, Charles Dixon, 1901

Date	20 October 1793
Location	Off Cape Barfleur, English Channel
Result	British victory

Belligerents

Great Britain

French Republic

Commanders and leaders

Captain James Saumarez

Captain François A. Dénian

Strength

Frigate HMS Crescent, distantly supported by HMS Circe

Frigate Réunion and cutter Espérance

Casualties and losses

1 wounded

33 killed, 48 wounded, Réunion captured

The Action of 20 October 1793 was a minor naval engagement of the French Revolutionary Wars fought off Cape Barfleur on the French coast of the English Channel. The early months of the war, which had begun in February, had seen a number of French frigates raiding British merchant shipping in the Channel, and HMS Crescent under Captain James Saumarez was deployed to watch the port of Cherbourg with the aim of disrupting the operations of the French frigates Réunion and Sémillante that were based in the harbour. On 20 October, Saumarez was waiting off Cape Barfleur for French movement when his lookout sighted Réunion and the cutter Espérance approaching from open water.

Saumarez immediately moved to engage the French ship and managed to isolate the frigate and subject it to a fierce barrage of fire for more than two hours. Captain François A. Dénian on Réunion responded, but aside from inflicting minor damage to Saumarez's rigging achieved little while his own vessel was heavily battered, suffering severe damage to rigging masts and hull and more than 80 and possibly as many as 120 casualties. British losses were confined to a single man wounded by an accident aboard Crescent. Eventually Dénian could not hold out any longer and was forced to surrender on the arrival of the 28-gun British frigate HMS Circe. Réunion was later repaired and commissioned into the Royal Navy, while Saumarez was knighted for his success.

At the outbreak of war between the Kingdom of Great Britain and the French Republic in the early spring of 1793, the French Revolutionary Wars were already a year old. The French Navy was already suffering from the upheavals of the French Revolution and the consequent dissolution of the professional officer class, while the Royal Navy had been at a state of readiness since the summer of 1792. During the early months of the war the French Navy focused heavily on raiding and disrupting British commerce and deployed frigates on raiding operations against British commercial shipping. In the English Channel, two of the most successful raiders were the frigates Réunion and Sémillante, based in Cherbourg on the Cotentin Peninsula. These frigates would make short cruises, leaving Cherbourg in the early evening and returning in the morning with any prizes they had encountered during the night.

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Wikipedia