Action of 3 July 1810

Action of 3 July 1810
Part of the Napoleonic Wars
Date 3 July 1810 Location Comoros Islands, Indian Ocean. Result French victory
Belligerents
French Empire	Honourable East India Company
Commanders and leaders
Guy-Victor Duperré	Henry Meriton
Strength
frigates Bellone, Minerve and brig Victor	East Indiamen Ceylon, Windham and Astell
Casualties and losses
22 killed, 38 wounded	20 killed, 76 wounded, Ceylon and Windham captured

The Action of 3 July 1810 was a minor naval engagement of the Napoleonic Wars, in which a French frigate squadron under Guy-Victor Duperré attacked and defeated a convoy of Honourable East India Company East Indiamen near the Comoros Islands. During the engagement the British convoy resisted strongly and suffered heavy casualties but two ships were eventually forced to surrender. These were the British flagship, the Windham, which held off the French squadron to allow the surviving ship Astell to escape, and the Ceylon. The engagement was the third successful French attack on an Indian Ocean convoy in just over a year, the French frigates being part of a squadron operating from the Île de France under Commodore Jacques Hamelin.

Although a British frigate squadron under Josias Rowley was under orders to eliminate the French raiders, Rowley was distracted by the planned invasion of Île Bonaparte, which began the following week. Combined with limited British resources in the region, this allowed the French frigates significant freedom to attack British interests across the Ocean. The attack on Île Bonaparte was however part of a wider British strategy to seize and capture French raiding bases, and the success of the operation severely limited future French operations as Hamelin's squadron was required for the defence of Île de France. As a result, this was the last successful attack on a British merchant convoy in the Indian Ocean during the Napoleonic Wars.

Since the beginning of the Napoleonic Wars in 1803, French privateers and naval frigates operating from the fortified island bases of Île de France and Île Bonaparte had attacked British shipping in the Indian Ocean. The huge distances involved, restrictions on supplies and the presence of Royal Navy warships and heavily armed East Indiamen had prevented these relatively weak French ships from attacking the convoys that transported millions of pounds worth of goods from British India and the Far East to the United Kingdom. When one French squadron under Admiral Linois had tried to seize a convoy in 1805, it had been driven off by the aggressive tactics of the merchant captains.

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