Battle of Glorious First of June

[john sefton]

Background

On 2 May 1794, Lord Howe was ordered to sea with 26 sail of the line of the Channel Fleet to escort a westbound convoy clear of the Western Approaches and then to try an intercept an expected inbound French convoy. At roughly the same time Villaret-Joyeuse also put to sea from Brest with 25 ships to attempt to meet the convoy, and managed to do so without encountering the British.
However, sailing homeward he was unable to avoid meeting Howe, first coming into contact on 28 May, the first phase of the battle taking place the next day.

The battle: Phase 1 (29 May 1794)

The French held the tactically superior weather gauge, but Howe managed to bring his fleet up from leeward and break the French line in two, cutting off the last five ships, and concentrating his fire on them. Two were taken and the other three badly damaged, but perhaps more importantly by sailing through the line Howe had gained the weather gauge. It was now impossible for Villaret-Joyeuse to avoid further action.

The battle: Phase 2 (1 June 1794)


With the windward position, Howe formed his fleet in the standard three squadrons of two divisions in line ahead. He himself commanded the centre squadron with Rear-Admiral Gardner commanding the second division. Admiral Graves took the van squadron, with Rear-Admiral Pasley commanding the second division. Sir Alexander Hood, younger of the two brothers, commanded the rear: there was no other flag officer for the second division.
Howe ordered all of his ships to sail to break the French line, raking them as far as possible, and then to engage from leeward. Seven of his ships managed to break the line, taking six prizes and sinking one ship. The remainder of the French fleet was allowed to escape unpursued into Brest.

Aftermath


There was little immediate strategic significance to the victory, which was however the first major engagement of the war between two more or less equal fleets. Howe has been criticised for failing to exploit his victory by following the escaping ships, and being content with his immediate victory: but in doing so he was keeping to the established traditions of war at sea (like Rodney at the Saintes). The Nelson (or Napoleonic) touch and the concomitant desire not merely to defeat but to destroy the enemy was yet to come.
Two more modern developments foreshadowed in the battle were that Villaret-Joyeuse had alongside him a political commissar, Jean-Bon Saint-André, effectively in joint command like the political officers with the Red Army in 1941; and that the National Convention - as the French parliament was then called - had decreed the death penalty for the captain and officers of any ship surrendering to the enemy, unless the ship was in danger of sinking.
Since wooden ships so rarely sank, they were in effect insisting on a fight to the death, something new in naval - or for that matter military - tradition.

http://www.cleverley.org/navy/june1battle.html

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