Action of 31 March 1800 1800
Recorded location from Wikidata; battle sites are often approximate.
Key facts
| Date | 31 March 1800 | Wikidata |
|---|---|---|
| Year | 1800 | Wikidata P585 (point in time) |
| Era | 19th century (1800–1913) | derived from year |
| Nearest landmass | At sea (nearest continent: Europe) | Natural Earth (modern borders) |
| Continent | Europe | Natural Earth |
| War / conflict | French Revolutionary Wars | Wikidata P361 |
| Participants | France, Kingdom of Great Britain | Wikidata P710 |
| Coordinates | 36.1900, 14.6200 | Wikidata P625 |
About the battle
The action of 31 March 1800 was a naval engagement of the War of the Second Coalition fought between a Royal Navy squadron and a French Navy ship of the line off Malta in the Mediterranean Sea. By March 1800 Valletta, the Maltese capital, had been under siege for eighteen months and food supplies were severely depleted, a problem exacerbated by the interception and defeat of a French replenishment convoy in mid-February. In an effort to simultaneously obtain help from France and reduce the number of personnel maintained in the city, the naval commander on the island, Counter-Admiral Pierre-Charles Villeneuve, ordered his subordinate Counter-Admiral Denis Decrès to put to sea with the large ship of the line Guillaume Tell, which had arrived in the port shortly before the siege began in September 1798. Over 900 men were carried aboard the ship, which was to sail for Toulon under cover of darkness on 30 March.
The British had maintained a blockade off Malta since the beginning of the siege, ostensibly led by Rear-Admiral Lord Nelson, who by March 1800 was defying a direct order from his superior officer Lord Keith by remaining in Palermo with his lover Emma, Lady Hamilton.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Action of 31 March 1800 (revision 1370426643), 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.
Nearby battles
- Battle of the Malta Convoy 1800 · 34 km
- Siege of Malta (1798–1800) 1798 · 34 km
- Battle of Malta (1283) 1283 · 34 km
- Great Siege of Malta 1565 · 34 km
- Siege of Malta (World War II) 1940 · 37 km
- Siege of Medina (1053–1054) 1053 · 39 km
Other battles of the French Revolutionary Wars
- Siege of Malta (1798–1800) 1798
- Action of 9 February 1799 (South Africa) 1799
- Battle of Bergen (1799) 1799
- Battle of Verona (1799) 1799
- Macau Incident (1799) 1799
- Battle of Ampfing (1800) 1800
- Battle of the Malta Convoy 1800
- Raid on Dunkirk (1800) 1800
- Action of 19 February 1801 1801
- Battle of Mandora 1801
All 81 battles of the French Revolutionary Wars →
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