Action of 20 October 1793 1793
Recorded location from Wikidata; battle sites are often approximate.
Key facts
| Date | 20 October 1793 | Wikidata |
|---|---|---|
| Year | 1793 | Wikidata P585 (point in time) |
| Era | Early modern (1500–1799) | derived from year |
| Location | France | Natural Earth (modern borders) |
| Continent | Europe | Natural Earth |
| War / conflict | French Revolutionary Wars | Wikidata P361 |
| Participants | France, Kingdom of Great Britain | Wikidata P710 |
| Coordinates | 49.6676, -1.2524 | Wikidata P625 |
About the battle
The action of 20 October 1793 was fought off Cape Barfleur in the English Channel during the War of the First Coalition. The early months of the year had seen a number of French frigates raiding British merchant shipping in the Channel, and HMS Crescent under Captain James Saumarez was deployed to watch the port of Cherbourg-en-Cotentin with the aim of disrupting the operations of the French frigates Réunion and Sémillante that were based in the harbour. On 20 October, Saumarez was waiting off Cape Barfleur for French movement when his lookout sighted Réunion and the cutter Espérance approaching from open water.
Saumarez immediately moved to engage the French ship and managed to isolate the frigate and subject it to a fierce barrage of fire for more than two hours. Captain François A. Dénian on Réunion responded, but aside from inflicting minor damage to Saumarez's rigging achieved little while his own vessel was heavily battered, suffering severe damage to rigging masts and hull and more than 80 and possibly as many as 120 casualties. British losses were confined to a single man wounded by an accident aboard Crescent. Eventually Dénian could not hold out any longer and was forced to surrender on the arrival of the 28-gun British frigate HMS Circe.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Action of 20 October 1793 (revision 1370426220), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section; shortened by selecting paragraphs and trimming at a sentence boundary; formatting and citations removed. No text added.
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Other battles of the French Revolutionary Wars
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- Siege of Namur (1792) 1792
- Siege of Thionville (1792) 1792
- Action of 18 June 1793 1793
- Action of 24 October 1793 1793
- Action of 31 July 1793 1793
- Battle of Brécourt 1793
- Battle of Epierre 1793
- Battle of Mas Deu 1793
- Battle of Menin (1793) 1793
All 81 battles of the French Revolutionary Wars →
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