Cornwallis's Retreat

Overview

Cornwallis's Retreat was a naval engagement during the French Revolutionary Wars in which a British Royal Navy squadron of five ships of the line and two frigates was attacked by a much larger French Navy fleet of 12 ships of the line and 11 frigates. The action took place in the waters off the west coast of Brittany on 16–17 June 1795.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Significance

Cornwallis's Retreat was a naval engagement in the waters off the west coast of Brittany in which a British squadron of five ships of the line and two frigates faced a substantially larger French force of twelve ships of the line and eleven frigates. The numerical disparity made the engagement a test of the British squadron's ability to disengage against overwhelming odds rather than a contest for tactical advantage. The action occurred within the broader context of the French Revolutionary Wars at sea, where British naval operations in the Bay of Biscay and off the French Atlantic coast were a continuing feature of the conflict.

Tactics

Commanders (2)