Battle of Groix - Background

Background

The first two years of the French Revolutionary Wars had seen the French Atlantic Fleet, based principally at the Breton harbour of Brest suffer a series of setbacks. The febrile atmosphere in France following the French Revolution was reflected in the fleet, which suffered a mutiny in September 1793 followed by a purge of suspected anti-republicans which resulted in the death or imprisonment of a number of experienced commanders. In May 1794, the French fleet sallied out into the Atlantic to protect an incoming grain convoy from the United States and was attacked by the British Channel Fleet at the battle of the Glorious First of June, losing seven ships although the convoy was saved. In the winter of 1794–1795, five more French ships were lost in a disastrous sortie in the middle of the Atlantic winter storm season known as the Croisière du Grand Hiver. By the spring of 1795, the British Channel Fleet was in the ascendency, enforcing a distant blockade of the French naval base.

In May 1795, with much of the winter's damage repaired, the French commander Admiral Villaret de Joyeuse sent a squadron of three ships of the line and several frigates under Contre-Admiral Jean Gaspard Vence to Bordeaux with orders to escort a convoy of merchant ships carrying wine and brandy to Brest. On 8 June, as Vence's convoy passed the fortified island of Belle Île on the southern Breton coast they were discovered by a British battle squadron of five ships of the line and two frigates under Vice-Admiral William Cornwallis. Vence ordered his outnumbered ships to shelter under the batteries of Belle Île, and after a brief skirmish Cornwallis withdrew his forces and eight captured merchant ships. While Cornwallis was escorting his prizes to the mouth of the Channel, Vence sailed out of the Belle Île anchorage and discovered on 15 June that the main force of the Atlantic fleet had sailed to rescue him, a mission ordered by government over the objections of the fleet's officers that Vence would be able to easily extricate himself from the anchorage due to the proximity of the port of Lorient.

In the morning of 16 June, Cornwallis returned to the region hunting for Vence and instead discovered Villaret de Joyeuse with an overwhelming force. This time Cornwallis was forced to retreat, heading out into open water with the French fleet in pursuit. Cornwallis was hampered by the poor sailing of two of his squadron, and on the morning of 17 June the leading French ships were close enough to open fire on his rearguard. Throughout the day the French vanguard kept up a distant but continual fire on the rearmost British ship HMS Mars, until eventually the ship began to fall behind the others. In an effort to protect Mars, Cornwallis interposed his 100-gun flagship HMS Royal Sovereign between the British squadron and the French force, its massive broadsides driving the French back. At the same time, Cornwallis had ordered the frigate HMS Phaeton to range ahead of his squadron making false signals announcing the imminent arrival of a British fleet. These concerned Villaret so much that at 18:40 he called off pursuit and returned to the French coast, allowing Cornwallis to return to Britain without further incident. The engagement was subsequently known as Cornwallis's Retreat.

Unbeknownst to either Villaret or Cornwallis, the British Channel Fleet was at sea, having sailed from Spithead on 12 June with 14 ships of the line and 11 smaller vessels, under the command of Admiral Alexander Hood, 1st Viscount Bridport. Bridport was not aware that the main French fleet was at sea, and had been tasked with ensuring the safety of a convoy of transports, commanded by Commodore Sir John Borlase Warren, which carried a French Royalist army to Quiberon with the intention of triggering a counter-revolution in Brittany. This force consisted of an additional three ships of the line, six frigates and more than 50 transports containing 2,500 French Royalists. The voyage across the English Channel and around the Ushant headland took seven days, the combined fleet and expeditionary force arriving off Belle Île on 19 June. Bridport had ordered Warren to take his convoy on to Quiberon while the main body of the Channel Fleet stood further out to sea to intercept any attack by the French Atlantic Fleet which Bridport assumed would advance southwards from Brest. What the British admiral did not know however was that not only had the French fleet sailed a week earlier, but that they were still at sea, Villaret's fleet having been blown southwards by a severe gale on 18 June and forced to take shelter in the anchorage off Belle Île.