Action of 31 July 1793 1793
Recorded location from Wikidata; battle sites are often approximate.
Key facts
| Date | 31 July 1793 | Wikidata |
|---|---|---|
| Year | 1793 | Wikidata P585 (point in time) |
| Era | Early modern (1500–1799) | derived from year |
| Nearest landmass | At sea (nearest continent: North America) | Natural Earth (modern borders) |
| Continent | North America | Natural Earth |
| War / conflict | French Revolutionary Wars | Wikidata P361 |
| Participants | France, Kingdom of Great Britain | Wikidata P710 |
| Coordinates | 40.2639, -73.8361 | Wikidata P625 |
About the battle
The action of 31 July 1793 was an inconclusive engagement between a frigate from the Royal Navy and another from the French Navy off the New Jersey coastline in the first year of the War of the First Coalition. The British captain, George Courtenay of HMS Boston, had arrived off New York City on 28 May and deliberately disguised his ship as a French vessel, fooling a French officer into coming aboard and making him a prisoner of war. Courtenay then sent a message into New York, where he knew a French frigate lay at anchor, challenging the French captain to battle within the next three days. The challenge was accepted and widely disseminated throughout the city, so that when Captain Jean-Baptiste-François Bompart of Embuscade sailed out to meet Courtenay on the morning of 31 July, the shore was crowded with thousands of sightseers.
The engagement between the ships was fiercely contested, but the smaller and more lightly armed Boston seemed to be taking the more serious damage when at 6:20 Captain Courtenay was thrown to the deck. What happened next has been subject to debate, with the second-in-command, Lieutenant John Edwards claiming that Courtenay had been killed and he was thrown overboard as was the custom at the time.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Action of 31 July 1793 (revision 1370426629), 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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- Action of 18 June 1793 1793
- Action of 20 October 1793 1793
- Action of 24 October 1793 1793
- Battle of Brécourt 1793
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All 81 battles of the French Revolutionary Wars →
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