The Glorious First of June
Two hundred and twenty-four years ago today on 1st June 1794 - on the "Glorious First of June" - the first major naval battle of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars was fought.
A Royal Navy fleet under Earl Howe inflicted serious damage on the French fleet, taking six ships of the line and sinking another.
This contemporary picture by Nicholas Pocock shows a British 74, HMS Defence, fighting back despite having been dismasted while under attack from two French ships of the line, the Mucius Scaevola and the Tourville. The Defence was the first of several RN ships which broke the French line, thereby disrupting their formation and enabling the Royal Navy to inflict much greater damage on the French ships, but in the period immediately after doing so she came under very heavy fire.
Both sides claimed victory: the British because they had inflicted much greater damage on a fleet of slightly superior numbers, the French because they succeeded in the object for which they fought, buying time for a badly needed grain convoy to get through at a time when people in France were starving.
Both arguments have some merit, but in terms of the outcome of the war the greater significance probably lies in the fact that the badly damaged French fleet was forced to withdraw to port in Brest enabling the British to establish a blockade which kept the French in port for most of the rest of the war.
A Royal Navy fleet under Earl Howe inflicted serious damage on the French fleet, taking six ships of the line and sinking another.
This contemporary picture by Nicholas Pocock shows a British 74, HMS Defence, fighting back despite having been dismasted while under attack from two French ships of the line, the Mucius Scaevola and the Tourville. The Defence was the first of several RN ships which broke the French line, thereby disrupting their formation and enabling the Royal Navy to inflict much greater damage on the French ships, but in the period immediately after doing so she came under very heavy fire.
Both sides claimed victory: the British because they had inflicted much greater damage on a fleet of slightly superior numbers, the French because they succeeded in the object for which they fought, buying time for a badly needed grain convoy to get through at a time when people in France were starving.
Both arguments have some merit, but in terms of the outcome of the war the greater significance probably lies in the fact that the badly damaged French fleet was forced to withdraw to port in Brest enabling the British to establish a blockade which kept the French in port for most of the rest of the war.
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