Action of 9 July 1806 1806
Recorded location from Wikidata; battle sites are often approximate.
Key facts
| Date | 9 July 1806 | Wikidata |
|---|---|---|
| Year | 1806 | Wikidata P585 (point in time) |
| Era | 19th century (1800–1913) | derived from year |
| Location | Sri Lanka | Natural Earth (modern borders) |
| Continent | Asia | Natural Earth |
| War / conflict | Napoleonic Wars | Wikidata P361 |
| Participants | France, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland | Wikidata P710 |
| Coordinates | 6.4667, 81.7167 | Wikidata P625 |
About the battle
The action of 9 July 1806 was a minor engagement between a French privateer frigate and British forces off Southern Ceylon during the Napoleonic Wars. French privateers operating from the Indian Ocean islands of Île Bonaparte and Île de France were a serious threat to British trade across the Indian Ocean during the Wars, and the British deployed numerous methods of intercepting them, including disguising warships as merchant vessels to lure privateers into unequal engagements with more powerful warships. Cruising near the Little Basses Reef on the Southern coast of Ceylon, the 34-gun privateer Bellone was sighted by the 16-gun British brig HMS Rattlesnake, which began chasing the larger French vessel. At 15:15, a third ship was sighted to the south, which proved to be the 74-gun ship of the line HMS Powerful, disguised as an East Indiaman.
Although Bellone would normally be much faster than the large British warship, the light winds and Rattlesnake's determined pursuit prevented the privateer from escaping and at 17:00, Powerful was close enough to open fire. Despite the uneven nature of the combat, Bellone unexpectedly resisted the British attack for another hour and 45 minutes, causing more damage to Powerful than she received herself.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Action of 9 July 1806 (revision 1370426817), 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 Gannoruwa 1638 · 153 km
- Siege of Galle (1640) 1640 · 173 km
- Battle of Providien 1782 · 200 km
- Battle of Mulleriyawa 1559 · 202 km
- Siege of Kotte (1557–1558) 1557 · 208 km
- Dutch–Portuguese War 1654 · 218 km
Other battles of the Napoleonic Wars
- Battle of Cape Ortegal 1805
- Battle of Diamond Rock 1805
- Battle of Mariazell 1805
- Battle of Memmingen 1805
- Battle of Ulm 1805
- Action of 13 March 1806 1806
- Action of 21 April 1806 1806
- Battle of Blaauwberg 1806
- Battle of Golymin 1806
- Battle of Jena–Auerstedt 1806
All 50 battles of the Napoleonic Wars →
Browse more: battles in Sri Lanka · Asia · 19th century battles