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Action of 21 October 1794
The Action of 21 October 1794 was a minor naval engagement between Great Britain and France fought off the Breton coast of France during the second year of the French Revolutionary Wars. French frigates had been raiding British Atlantic trade routes with considerable success since the outbreak of the war, and in response the Admiralty had formed a frigate squadron to patrol the French Channel and Atlantic coasts in search of French raiders. On 13 October 1794, the large, modern and powerful 40-gun French frigate ''Révolutionnaire'' under the command of Captain Antoine René Thévenard sailed from Le Havre for a raiding cruise against British trade routes in the Atlantic. Eight days later, while rounding the Breton headland of Ushant about 25– miles out to sea, ''Révolutionnaire'' encountered the British frigate squadron, commanded by Commodore Sir Edward Pellew, which had secured a number of victories over French raiding frigates during the previous two years.
Pellew ordered his ships to give chase, as Thévenard fled towards the French coast before the British numerical supremacy. One British ship was faster than the others, the 38-gun HMS ''Artois'' under Captain Edmund Nagle cutting ''Révolutionnaire'' off from the shore and bringing the larger French ship to action. For 45 minutes ''Artois'' battled ''Révolutionnaire'' until support arrived, at which point the French frigate's crew surrendered their ship in defiance of their captain's orders. Casualties and damage were light on both sides, and ''Révolutionnaire'' was rapidly commissioned into the Royal Navy, joining the squadron that had captured her and subsequently capturing the French frigate ''Unité'' at the Action of 13 April 1796.
==Background==
Following the French Republic's declaration of war on Great Britain in February 1793, the French Navy immediately launched squadrons, individual cruisers and privateers against British trade routes in the Eastern Atlantic.〔Woodman, p. 20〕 The French Atlantic fleet, based at the fortified port of Brest in Brittany, was in a state of political turmoil during the early years of the war, suffering a mutiny in August 1793,〔James, p. 58〕 and then defeat at the battle of Glorious First of June in 1794.〔Gardiner, p. 37〕 In spite of these difficulties, the independent raiders caused considerable damage to British commerce, and in response the Admiralty ordered a squadron of frigates from the Channel Fleet to cruise the French coastline in search of these raiders. This force, known as the flying squadron and initially commanded by Sir John Borlase Warren, achieved a number of successes in the first year of the war, most notably in the Action of 23 April 1794, when a French frigate squadron was destroyed.〔Henderson, p. 17〕
By the autumn of 1794, the squadron was under the command of Commodore Sir Edward Pellew in the frigate HMS ''Arethusa'', accompanied by HMS ''Artois'' under Captain Edmund Nagle, HMS ''Diamond'' under Captain Sir Sidney Smith and HMS ''Galatea'' under Captain Richard Goodwin Keats.〔 All four ships had specially selected crews and equipment and the squadron formed the elite force of the Channel Fleet's light warships.〔Henderson, p. 18〕 Pellew led his squadron out of Cawsand Bay on 19 October with the intention of cruising off the entrance to Brest and intercepting shipping entering or leaving the port. The French fleet, its principal squadrons blockaded in Brest, continued to send raiders to sea. One such ship, was the large newly commissioned 40-gun frigate ''Révolutionnaire'' under Captain Antoine René Thévenard with a hastily assembled and disaffected crew and a main battery of 18–pounder cannon, which departed from the Channel port of Le Havre on 13 October, sailing westwards towards the Atlantic.〔Woodman, p. 48〕
抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』
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