First Battle of Groix - Background

Background

By the late spring of 1795 Britain and France had been at war for more than two years, with the British Royal Navy's Channel Fleet, known at the time as the "Western Squadron" exerting superiority in the campaign for dominance in the Bay of Biscay and the Western Approaches. The British, led first by Lord Howe and then by Lord Bridport sailing from their bases at Plymouth, Portsmouth and Torbay, maintained an effective distant blockade against the French naval bases on the Atlantic, especially the large harbour of Brest in Brittany. Although French squadrons could occasionally put to sea without interception, the main French fleet had suffered a series of setbacks in the preceding two years, most notably at the battle of the Glorious First of June in 1794 at which the fleet lost seven ships of the line and then during the Croisière du Grand Hiver during the winter of 1794–1795 when five ships of the line were wrecked during a sortie into the Bay of Biscay at the height of the Atlantic winter storm season.

The damage the French Atlantic fleet had suffered in the winter operation took months to repair and it was not in a condition to sail again until June 1795, although several squadrons had put to sea in the meanwhile. One such squadron consisted of three ships of the line and a number of frigates under Contre-Admrial Jean Gaspard Vence sent to Bordeaux to escort a merchant convoy up the coast to Brest. The British Channel Fleet had briefly sortied from Torbay in February in response to the Croisière du Grand Hiver and subsequently retired to Spithead, from where a squadron of five ships of the line and two frigates were sent on 30 May to patrol the approaches to Brest and to watch the French fleet. The force consisted of the 100-gun first-rate ship of the line HMS Royal Sovereign, the 74-gun ships of the line HMS Mars, HMS Triumph, HMS Brunswick and HMS Bellerophon, the frigates HMS Phaeton and HMS Pallas and the small big-sloop HMS Kingfisher, under the overall command of Vice-Admiral William Cornwallis in Royal Sovereign. Cornwallis was a highly experienced naval officer who had been in service with the Navy since 1755 and fought in the Seven Years War and the American Revolutionary War, including the significant naval victories over the French at the Battle of Quiberon Bay in 1759 and the Battle of the Saintes in 1782.

Cornwallis led his squadron southwest, rounding Ushant on the night of 7–8 June and cruising southwards down the Breton coast past the Penmarck Rocks. At 10:30 that morning, Captain Sir Erasmus Gower on Triumph signalled that he could see six sails to the northeast. Cornwallis turned the squadron to investigate, and discovered the small squadron under Vence in command of a large merchant convoy. Vence initially held his course when Cornwallis's squadron appeared, in the belief that they were French. When he realised his mistake at 12:00, he ordered his ships to make all sail towards the anchorage in the shelter of the fortified island of Belle Île. Vence's squadron made rapid progress towards the anchorage, but Cornwallis had sent his faster ships ahead, Phaeton, Kingfisher and Triumph in the lead, while Brunswick, which had been badly loaded when at anchor in Spithead and thus was unable to sail smoothly, fell far behind. The leading British ships were able to fire on Vence's force at a distance, and attacked the trailing merchant ships and their frigate escorts, forcing a French frigate to abandon a merchant ship it had under tow, but could not bring Vence to action without the support of the slower vessels in Cornwallis's squadron. As a result, all of the French warships and all but eight of the merchant vessels were safely anchored at Belle Île. Triumph and Phaeton both advanced on the anchored ships, but came under heavy fire from batteries on the island and found that the water was too shallow and the passage too uncertain to risk their ships. Phaeton lost one man killed and seven wounded before Cornwallis called off the attack.

Taking his eight prizes laden with wine and brandy, Cornwallis retired to the sheltered anchorage of Palais Road, close to Belle Île, where the squadron remained until 9 June. In the evening, Cornwallis took advantage of a fresh breeze to sail his ships out into the Bay of Biscay and around the Ushant headland, reaching the Scilly Isles on 11 June and sending Kingfisher back to Spithead with the French prizes and two American merchant ships seized in French waters. Cornwallis then ordered the squadron to turn back to the blockade of Brest in the hope of encountering Vence in more favourable circumstances. At Brest, messages had arrived warning that Vence and the convoy were "blockaded" at Belle Île and the French commander was instructed to rescue him. In fact, as was pointed out by a number of officers in the French fleet including Admiral Kerguelen, the anchorage at Belle Île could never be effectively blockaded as it was too open to block all potential approaches and too close to the major port of Lorient and therefore a rescue was unnecessary. This advice was ignored, and Admiral Villaret de Joyeuse sailed from Brest on 12 June with the ships that were anchored in Brest Roads ready for sea. Villaret's fleet consisted of nine ships of the line, nine frigates (including two ships of the line razeed into 50-gun frigates) and four corvettes.

On 15 June, the French fleet encountered Vence's squadron sailing off the island of Groix near Lorient, and the two joined, Vence having sent the remainder of his convoy safely to Brest while Villaret was en route. Turning north back towards Brest, the French fleet was off Penmarck Point at 10:30 on 16 June with the wind in the northwest, when sails were spotted to the northwest. This force was Cornwallis's squadron, returning to Belle Île in search of Vence. Sighting his numerically inferior opponent to windward, Villaret immediately ordered his fleet to advance on the British force while Cornwallis, anticipating Vence's merchant convoy and not immediately apprehending the danger his squadron was in, sent Phaeton to investigate the sails on the horizon.